


over your heart

by playingprince



Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - High School, Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst, Homophobia, Implied Sexual Content, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Renjun Loves Bugs, Toxic Relationships, by which i mean he isn't moral at all, in which renjun is morally grey, please do not take these tags lightly, read the notes at the beginning, there's a love triangle but it Isn't What It Seems, u wanted angst here it is, warning: its sad
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-08-06
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:08:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,527
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23225320
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/playingprince/pseuds/playingprince
Summary: “Who’s ever heard of a boy that wears a locket?”
Relationships: Huang Ren Jun/Lee Jeno
Comments: 287
Kudos: 459





	1. Renjun

**Author's Note:**

> hello! please read me!!!!!
> 
> firstly, this fic’s premise is very directly cribbed from “revolutionary girl utena” (episodes 7 + 17 specifically), a show which you absolutely should watch if you haven’t already. outside of the premise itself, this fic goes in its own direction, but that show was 100% the inspiration!!
> 
> secondly, i have this tagged, but please note that this fic focuses on homophobia (largely internalized), bullying, and toxic masculinity; please read with caution if you are sensitive to these topics. less prominently, this fic features non-descriptive scenes discussing death (particularly the death of a parent) and grief, so do not read if you are not comfortable!!
> 
> thirdly, i am going to warn you upfront that renjun’s character in this fic is NOT LIKEABLE. like, worse than jeno in [wwbft](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20727176/chapters/49243046), if you read that. but PLEASE BEAR WITH ME AND PLAY WITH ME IN THIS HEADSPACE BC I PROMISE THIS IS GOING SOMEWHERE & WITH GOOD REASON!!!!! again, check the tags!!!
> 
> ok thats all i have to say, ty……… i hope u enjoy

_The loser in love is the one who lets their heart be ruled by it._

_— Kunihiko Ikuhara_

The morning light from the classroom window struck sideways, pouring across the nearest row of desks. It lit up their metal legs, reflections sharp enough to cut, and magnified all the smallest details, like the slight pilling at the shoulder of Jeno’s jacket and the dust that flitted just above it like a swarm of mosquitos, crazed and uncountable. The light touched his hair, too, shiny black and effortlessly perfect in the way that everything about Lee Jeno was effortlessly perfect, though Renjun would never admit it. And where his hair ended, down the slope of his neck, half-hidden beneath the collar of his shirt, was a glittering golden clasp that linked the ends of a thin chain, small and unnoticeable if not for the fact that Renjun had to stare at Jeno’s back every single day during class. And though Jeno kept that chain tucked beneath his shirt, Renjun knew it was there. His eyes kept going back to it, every minute, without fail, to the gold clasp winking in the squares of sunlight, as if it knew Renjun was looking and was teasing him, torturing him. He leaned his elbows on his desktop so he could get closer, glaring at that clasp, sucking at the inside of his cheek.

Then he lunged forward, grabbing the necklace in his fist and yanking it. Jeno flew backwards in his chair as the chain dug into his throat, and he hit his head off the front of Renjun’s desk with a noisy bang like the crack of a baseball bat. He let out a sharp yelp, and his hands went to the back of his head. His chair remained in its backwards tilt, and his chain remained clutched in Renjun’s hand.

“What the hell was that for?” he asked, words peaked with pain.

Renjun’s grip tightened, the chain coiling his fist like a leash. “Who’s ever heard of a boy that wears a locket?”

Jeno overcame the aching of his head to tug the locket out of Renjun’s hands. His chairlegs resettled against the tile floor, and he hastily began to shove the pendant back under his shirt. Before he could, Renjun glimpsed the pendant’s surface -- a simple oval, engraved with a ring of flowers, the latch prominent on its left side.

“What’s it to you?” Jeno said quietly. He glanced around the classroom. It was a moment of lull before first period, and the other students seemed too sleepy to have noticed the clamoring across the room, half of them chatting in a quiet circle, the other half lying with their foreheads resting on their folded arms, trying to squeeze in a few minutes more of rest.

Renjun lowered back into his seat and crossed his arms. He did not know when it was that Jeno had begun wearing that locket. Of course, they’d been in high school together for the past three years, but this year was the first where Renjun and Jeno had shared the same homeroom. And as if fated, his assigned seat was directly behind Jeno’s, and soon enough, he noticed the little golden clasp. Jeno had not worn the locket in middle school, that much he was sure of. Somewhere in the place in between -- a distant place, filled with spare, resentful glances and words exchanged only out of necessity -- that locket had settled around Jeno’s neck, and he wore it every single day, hidden beneath his shirt like it was a secret.

Renjun hated secrets, unless he was privy to them. And any secret Renjun was privy to would not be a secret for long.

“What’s inside it?” Renjun asked, nonchalantly, as if he hadn’t just nearly given Jeno a concussion.

“A photo,” Jeno responded.

“Of who?” Renjun needled. “Your mother?”

“No. And it’s none of your business, anyway.”

Renjun let out an indignant huff. This was one of many things he hated about Jeno -- his unwavering calmness, the easy way in which he brushed off troubles like they were mere trifles. It made him hard to rattle. But that only made Renjun want to rattle him more.

He stood, and walked around to the side of Jeno’s desk, perching on its corner. Sweetly, slinkily, he asked, “Are you still mad at me, Jeno? After all this time?”

Jeno, true to form, did not even give Renjun the satisfaction of his gaze. He continued to stare down at his textbook, which sat unopened in front of him. “No. I was never mad at you in the first place.”

_Liar. Dirty fucking liar._

Renjun wanted to push Jeno’s textbook off his desk, let it hit the floor with a heavy thump, loud enough to jar Jeno in his seat. But he didn’t, because the teacher walked in then, carrying his mug of coffee and a stack of graded papers under his arm.

Renjun returned to his seat. He found the glint of the clasp again. His eyebrows furrowed.

\---

“Wanna hang out today?” Wonjae asked. “Me and Jungmin were gonna go to the movies.”

Renjun shook his head. “I have practice, sorry.”

“Oh shoot, I forgot. I was used to you having practice on Tuesdays, not Thursdays.”

“Haha, that’s okay. I forget sometimes, too.”

With a disappointed shrug. Wonjae said, “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

“Seeya.”

The other boy raced off down the hall. Once he was gone, Renjun let his smile fall away and tugged the bag with his track uniform from the bottom of his locker.

He often thought of himself as a perfectly normal high school student. He had a large group of friends, enough that he could reject one day’s plans and still expect another invitation before the week’s end. He got good enough grades, sitting somewhere around tenth place in the class rankings. Teachers liked him.

 _Conscientious, polite, a hard-worker,_ they always called him.

 _Just another way of saying “completely unremarkable,”_ he thought.

He changed out of his uniform and walked out onto the turf at the track’s middle, which was still edged with the remainder of winter’s snow. The other boys had already assembled, waiting by the bleachers for the coach. Renjun slipped in among them, not offering a hello. He was not very close with any of the boys on the track team, as he’d only just joined it at the beginning of that school year. He didn’t even know most of their names, aside from the other seniors. Every semester of his high school career, he’d joined a different sports team. And at every semester’s end, he would quit. He knew that there must be the right one out there, and he simply needed to find it -- at least, that was what his father insisted.

“Why don’t you just choose a different club?” a friend had asked him once. “Like, the literature or the art club.”

“Because I like sports,” Renjun had insisted. “It’s not a matter of the sports themselves -- it’s always the teams. I never mesh with them, personality-wise.”

This was half-true -- he often found his teammates were just as much strangers by the time he quit as they were when he’d joined. But at the same time, he could never put his heart into any sport he tried. He did not quite know why. He only knew that by the semester’s halfway point, the thought of dragging himself to practice after school was exhausting, just as exhausting as practice itself. He would watch bitterly the ease with which his teammates executed their warmups; meanwhile, his body was aching within minutes. It wasn’t for lack of trying. He had always been small, always had difficulty building muscle. He hated that about himself.

The coach finally arrived on the field, and split them up for warmups. He’d begun his high-knees (already sweating, and feeling like he must look incredibly stupid prancing around like that) when he saw the baseball team walking past outside the track circle’s gate. Near the front was Jeno, bag slung over his shoulder as he laughed at something one of his teammates said. Renjun wondered if Jeno even wore that locket during practice, tucked under his baseball uniform, its metal gone warm where it pressed to his chest. Did the other boys know about it? Did they eye it in the locker room, wondering what it meant, who was inside it? Maybe he left it in his locker, hanging from one of the hooks, glintless in the dark as he ran out onto the baseball diamond --

Renjun stumbled, foot rolling, and he face-planted onto the rough, ruddy red of the track.

“Are you alright?” his partner asked, bending over him.

Renjun sat up. His shins were scraped raw, blood beading in long scratches.

“You ought to be paying better attention. What were you staring at?”

Jeno had disappeared into the distance. Renjun’s nails dug into the grit of the painted white stripe beneath him.

The coach came over, observing the damage with a sigh. Renjun could already tell he did not like him. Coaches, unlike teachers, never liked him. They were all the same, he thought, playing clear favorites, patting some boys on the backs, telling others to stay on the bench where they belonged.

“Jaemin, can you help Renjun to the nurse’s office?”

“Sure.” Jaemin, Renjun’s warmup partner, offered him a hand. Renjun deliberately ignored it hefted himself to his feet. Then he found his ankle was sore and soon-to-bruise, so he begrudgingly allowed Jaemin to support him on his shoulder while he limped back inside the school building.

Jaemin was one of his fellow seniors, though one he paid little attention to -- he was one of Jeno’s friends, and Jeno’s friends were certainly not friends of Renjun. But Renjun realized that perhaps his rolled ankle was a stroke of luck. It provided him an opportunity.

“You’re close with Lee Jeno, aren’t you?” he asked, as they turned the corner into another hallway.

“Sure,” Jaemin said. “Why?”

“No reason in particular,” Renjun lied. “He’s kind of weird, isn’t he?”

Jaemin gave a dismissive laugh. “What do you mean? He’s just Jeno.”

“I don’t know. I just get a weird vibe from him.” Renjun took on a different tactic, trying an innocent smile. “I could be wrong, since I don’t know him well. What’s he like?”

Jaemin was not completely fooled -- he regarded Renjun curiously, one eyebrow cocked. “Jeno’s cool. He’s one of my best friends. I don’t know why you’d call him weird.”

They pushed open the door of the nurse’s office. She was on the phone in the next room over, and waved at them through the window in the door, indicating they should sit on the empty bed. Jaemin lowered Renjun down, and said, “Alright. I’m going to head back to practice.”

“Why does Jeno wear that locket around his neck?”

Jaemin froze at the unexpected question. “I don’t know. He’s never told me.”

 _So other people have seen it,_ Renjun thought. _But he’s just as cagey with them as he is with me._ “What do you suppose is inside it?”

“I don’t understand why you’re asking me all these questions,” Jaemin said flatly. “You ought to ask him yourself.”

“I’m a stranger. He wouldn’t tell me.”

Jaemin walked to the door, and halfway outside it, remarked, “That’s funny. Jeno told me once that you used to be a friend of his.”

The door clicked shut.

Renjun sat on the edge of the bed, perfectly still, mind churning.

_Jeno told his friends about me._

He wondered what exactly it was he had told them. Whatever it was, he couldn’t help but take some little bit of satisfaction in it. Jeno still talked about him. He was still on Jeno’s mind. He _knew_ Jeno had been lying when he’d said he wasn’t angry. He imagined the anger burning like a flame in Jeno’s stomach as he remembered what had happened five years ago. Jeno, still hung up on the past, never letting it go. Maybe it plagued him. Maybe he thought about it every single night as he lay in bed, and it ate slowly away at him, all the way down to his bones.

Renjun was so pleased at the thought, he could barely feel the scrapes on his shins.

\---

The apartment complex was far back from the street, closed in on itself like C, framed by the leafless trees of the wood beyond it. Renjun sorely made his way up the steps to his front door, which was unlocked. That meant his father was home.

Predictably, he was sitting at the dining room table, sipping from a beer bottle, reading the newspaper. Renjun was always told he looked just like his mother, though he could only confirm this through photographs, since he did not remember her well. Even without the photographs, it made logical sense, as he had to look like one of his parents, and he certainly looked nothing like his father. He was over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, sturdily built from years as a roofing worker. He had just recently turned fifty, and it showed in the graying of his stubble and the thinning of his hair. Renjun wondered if his father might have seemed softer when his mother was still alive. Presently, there was nothing soft about him.

“Renjun,” he said. His voice always boomed like it was emitted from a loudspeaker. Another difference between him and his son. “How was school?”

“Fine.” Renjun shuffled awkwardly past the kitchen cupboards, trying to turn his body away so his father might not notice his limp.

His father noticed anyway. “What the hell’s wrong with you? You’re walking funny.”

“I’m fine,” Renjun said.

“No, you’re not. Did you hurt yourself in practice?” He slapped his newspaper down against the tabletop. “Tell me.”

“I just fell. Banged myself up a little.”

His father sighed. “I don’t know how you manage it, Renjun.”

“It was just a slip-up.”

“It’s always ‘just a slip-up.’ One of these days you’ll really hurt yourself, and you’ll have to start sitting out of practice, and then you won’t even be able to run at meets.” The disappointment came through more strongly than the concern. He sighed, and took another sip from his beer. “Christ. What are we gonna do if you quit another team?”

“I’m not gonna quit.”

“You know, when I was your age, I was the ace of my school’s wrestling team. Won a gold medal in almost every tournament. Helped me get a scholarship when I went to college.”

“I know,” Renjun said, exasperated. “You’ve told me all this before.”

“I just don’t want the other boys making fun of you, if you can’t keep up with them.”

Renjun’s face reddened. It was always humiliating when he came home with a busted knee or a note from the coach. Even worse were the days he’d quit his teams. Last semester, when he’d quit the soccer team, his father had made him sit down for a stern talking to, which eventually descended into a shouting match. “You can’t stick with anything,” his father had accused. “You’re a quitter. It’s a fucking embarassment.” Renjun had begun bawling, and then his father had told him only girls cry, so Renjun had stomped into his bedroom and locked the door behind him, throwing himself onto his bed and sobbing into his pillow. His father had knocked on his door for close to an hour, telling him he had to open up, and when he did not, he resorted to pleading.

“Please. You’re all I have,” he’d said, sounding like he was close to crying himself, a perfect hypocrite. “Renjun, just talk to me. I won’t yell anymore.”

Renjun had not opened up.

Eventually, he’d fallen asleep, and when he'd woken in the night, he'd walked out to find his father passed out on the sofa, surrounded by a collection of empty beer bottles, having drunk himself to sleep.

Now, Renjun said, with false confidence, “I promise, I’ll get better. I’m just still getting used to the warm-ups.”

His father did not say anything else. Renjun was dismissed by the crinkling turn of a page.

He entered his bedroom, tossing his backpack to the floor. It was a disaster zone -- piles of dirty clothes, crumpled and discarded mess-ups from his homework, empty bags of chips he’d been too lazy to bring to the garbage. The only part that was not a mess was his desk, which was meticulously organized. There was a stack of styrofoam, an old tomato can in which he kept his pins and tweezers, a few bottles of rubbing alcohol at varying degrees of fullness. On the window sill above were his jars, where the corpses of bugs floated in the yellowing liquid, waiting to be prepped for display. The finished specimens were hung on his wall, trapped under glass -- butterflies, beetles, mayflies with long, delicate tails, impaled with pins and preserved. He kept a list of the species he’d captured in the notebook in his desk drawer, complete with illustrations cut from books, and his own studies, drawn by hand.

He walked over, swishing his bugs in their jars. He considered sitting down, doing a little documenting, but he was too distracted -- out his window, far in the distance, he could see Jeno’s house at the other end of the street, a one-story with a tidy yard and the outside light on, casting a yellow circle over the doorstep.

He wondered what Jeno was doing right then. His grasp on the jar tightened. The bugs’ bodies plinked against the glass.

He had an idea of who was inside that locket.

\---

_Yerim climbed up the hill ahead, her braid bouncing against her back. “Come on, Renjun. You’re being slow.”_

_He knelt in the dirt, hand clamped down as something wriggled beneath it. “I caught one. Give me a second.”_

_“You and your bugs,” she chided, rolling her eyes. “Haven’t you caught enough of them?”_

_“I like them,” he answered quietly._

_“Well, come on then, Jeno. I’m not waiting around for Bug Boy.”_

_Jeno stood over Renjun, trying to catch sight of the insect between his fingers. “Just give him a minute, Yerim.” Always patient. So patient it drove Renjun crazy._

_He snapped his hand shut. For a moment, he could not tell whether he’d caught it or not -- but then it flew up, a little carrion beetle, right into his face. He felt back on his butt, and it zipped away, into the trees and out of sight._

_“You almost had it,” Jeno offered. He held out a hand, and Renjun took it, rising to his feet._

_“It’s okay,” Renjun muttered. “I already have that kind, anyway.”_

_“Sure you do,” Yerim said. “Come on now, slowpokes.”_

_Renjun and Jeno climbed the hill after her. It was so steep it had to be accomplished practically on all fours, though the three of them had become used to it -- they climbed that hill almost every day. It was the spot in the woods closest to the sun, and during the afternoon, the sun streamed through the trees in just the perfect way that it filled their hollow with light. They slipped in now, between the close knit trunks, to their hideout. There was an arrangement of large rocks in the middle, flat and perfect to sit on. At the edge was a fallen tree, and on top of it, Yerim kept her plants. They'd found some empty booze bottles abandoned in the woods once, and she had co-opted them as flower pots, filling them with wet dirt and what were most likely weeds. It didn’t matter that they were weeds, though, because they grew nicely, spilling over the necks of their bottles. Hanging from the lowest branches above their heads were paper chains, still miraculously holding together -- it had not rained in the four days since they’d strung them up, so they’d retained their constitution. Yerim bounded into the hollow and plopped down on one of the rocks like it was a stool._

_“Club meeting,” she announced, pounding against a tree trunk with her flip flop. “Everyone, take your seats.”_

_“Since when was this a club?” Renjun asked, squeezing his way in._

_“I dunno. Might as well be a club. We meet pretty regularly.”_

_“What’s the club name?” Jeno asked. He did as Yerim said, sitting down, hands folded in his lap._

_“How about, ‘The Kings of the Woods?’”_

_“That’s dumb,” Renjun objected. “And you’re a girl. You can’t be a king.”_

_“I’d like to see you do better, smartass.”_

_“I liked it, Yerim,” Jeno said._

_She lit up at the compliment. “Thanks. What about you? Any ideas?”_

_“I’m not really good at coming up with clever names.” Jeno was always doing that, acting like he wasn’t good at things, when they all knew it wasn’t true. Renjun had half a mind to call out his put-on humility, but resisted the urge._

_“How about this?” Yerim said. “‘The Council of Comfy Hollow.’”_

_“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Renjun asked._

_“I think it’s cute,” she insisted. “What do you think, Jeno?”_

_“It’s fine.”_

_“Then that’s what we’ll call our club. We should make some club rules, too. First rule: no bugs.”_

_Renjun snorted. “There are bugs everywhere. You’re probably sitting on some.”_

_“Rule two: no sass.”_

_Suddenly, the clouds shifted above them, and the sun shone through. Yerim grinned and clamored onto the center stone, the big flat one that was like a table, and lay down across it. “Come on, before it disappears! We’ve got a perfect sunny spot!” She patted the stone on either side of her._

_Renjun and Jeno both lay down beside her, one on each side. Yerim took their hands so they linked in a chain, just like the paper chains above their heads. For that moment, Renjun forgot to be bitter. The past few months had been one long sunny spot for him, and though he was not always happy, he at least always had something to look forward to -- Yerim and Jeno knocking on his apartment door and leading him into the woods out back, where they had their own little world. There were no adults there -- maybe that was what made it so perfect. Just the three of them together, content in each other’s company. Even when they bickered, Renjun enjoyed it. He wouldn’t have had it any other way._

_As though she’d read his mind, Yerim said, “I hope we never grow up.”_

_He turned to look at her; but her head was turned towards Jeno, and Jeno’s head towards her._

_\---_

When Renjun arrived at school the next morning, Jeno was not there yet. This excited him, and he quickly sat down in Jeno’s chair, the second chair in the far row beside the windows. He liked pretending for a moment that he _was_ Jeno, the ace of the baseball team, the handsome but approachable boy that got along well with everybody, never a bad word spoken about him. It must be so easy to live that way, he thought. So simple. _Someone_ had to make it a little difficult for him.

“You’re in my seat.”

Renjun looked up. Jeno stood beside him, straight-mouthed.

“I know,” Renjun said.

“Do you mind moving, please?”

“I think I’ll stay here, actually. I’ll be you for the day, and you can be me.”

“No, thank you.”

The clock on the classroom wall ticked. Renjun remained sitting.

“Renjun,” Jeno said. “Come on.”

“If it bothers you so much, then make me move.”

“I’m not going to do that.”

“Sorry, I forgot. You’re too above it all to do such a thing. Too moral.” Renjun smirked and leaned back in his chair, stretching his legs, filling the space. “Then it seems like I can just do whatever I want, and you won’t stop me, right?”

Jeno’s face didn’t change, and he didn’t argue. He quietly took Renjun’s seat.

_Such a pushover._

Ten minutes later, the teacher walked in, set his things at his desk at the front of the room, and took attendance. When he got to Renjun’s name, a look of confusion passed over his face, and he squinted through his glasses at where Renjun sat. “Have you and Jeno switched seats?”

Renjun blinked and looked incredulously down at himself, perfectly performed. “Did we? I hadn’t noticed. I’m sorry about that.”

“Switch back, please.”

Renjun gathered his things and stood. Jeno had stood, too, and they were at an impasse, stuck in the narrow aisle between the rows of desks.

Renjun waited, expectantly.

Jeno stood aside to let him through.

Smiling, victorious, Renjun sat down in his proper seat.

Jeno sat, too, and the light caught the golden clasp at the back of his neck.

Renjun’s smile folded into a frown.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guess yeri is in this too lmao
> 
> also guess i lied about not publishing fic for a while......... the updates for this are probably going to be very irregular/far apart for awhile, but i wanted to get it started while i was motivated!!
> 
> ty all for reading!!
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/playing_prince) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/playing_prince)


	2. Jeno

Jeno was relieved to find that when he walked into the classroom in the morning, Renjun was not in his seat. Rather, he was across the room, chatting in a tight circle with some of his friends. Jeno was not very fond of Renjun’s friends, from what he had seen of them -- noisy boys who swore a lot and girls who smacked their gum during class. But it didn’t matter, because so long as Renjun was talking to his friends, he was not sitting behind Jeno; and so long as he was not behind Jeno, he was not causing trouble.

Jeno very quietly made his way to his desk. He sat, and turned to sling his coat over the back of his chair. As he did so, he noticed that Renjun had already taken out his textbook and notebook for their first period, leaving them on his desktop, pencil in the rut at the front. Beneath the notebook, Jeno caught sight of the blue corner of something else. He glanced back up to make sure that Renjun was still busy, then quickly nudged the notebook aside.

What lay beneath it was a small, bound-shut sketchbook. _So he still draws,_ Jeno thought, surprised. He recalled an occasion when they were ten years old, playing together at Renjun’s apartment. They sat at the dining room table, sharing a paper plate of crackers, a box of colored pencils spilled over the tablecloth. Renjun had a wide-ruled notebook open before him and was drawing a picture of a butterfly. They’d just seen one as they’d walked down the street, a pretty blue butterfly with dark speckled wings. Renjun had wanted to catch it, though he didn’t have his net, so he’d done the next best thing and replicated it on paper. Jeno had watched, transfixed. Renjun always held his pencil in a crude sort of way, like a toddler, tight in his fist, almost aggressive. But Renjun’s drawings were not harsh or heavy-handed. They were soft and spun in delicate lines, so expressive the butterfly might have danced off the page.

His father had walked by then, peering over Renjun’s shoulder. “What are you drawing?” he’d asked coolly.

“A butterfly,” Renjun had said.

His father had not spoken. He’d just looked Renjun in the eye, stern and stone-like.

Ashamed, Renjun had dropped his pencil and flipped to the next page of his notebook.

After that, they’d no longer played at Renjun’s house. It was always Jeno’s, or out in the woods behind their street. And Renjun would only draw on rare occasions, in secret, when he knew his father would not be able to to watch over his shoulder.

To this day, Jeno did not quite understand the interaction he’d seen. He _did_ understand that Renjun’s father tended to disapprove of everything Renjun liked. Jeno often had a hard time believing they were related at all, and not only because of how unalike they looked.

But Renjun still drew. Jeno was happy to see it. It was one of the things that made Renjun special.

“What are you doing?”

Jeno looked up. Renjun had come over, and seen Jeno examining his desk. Right then, he _did_ look like his father. He had his cold stare, with its touch of simmering heat just under the surface.

“Nothing,” Jeno said.

Renjun picked his notebook up and slammed it back down over his sketchbook, hiding it away. “Mind your own fucking business.”

“Alright.”

Renjun did not bother Jeno again before class started, as if he’d been shamed into silence.

\---

Jeno stood at his locker, grabbing his lunch.

“Hey,” Jaemin said, sliding in beside him.

“Hey. What’s up?”

“Not much. Did you bring me a brownie?”

Jeno laughed. “Yes. Of course I brought you your brownie, your highness.” Jeno’s father was a bit of an amateur baker, and once Jaemin had come to his house after school and been barraged by trays of sweets, Jeno’s father happy to have a new taste tester. Ever since, Jaemin had asked Jeno to bring his father’s creations to lunch for him. Jeno did not mind -- otherwise, he might have ended up eating them all himself, which was not a great idea if he wanted to stay in shape.

Jeno pulled the brownie, wrapped in a plastic baggie, from his lunchbox and tossed it at Jaemin, who caught it against his chest. “Thanks,” he responded, then immediately tore it open, not even waiting to get to the cafeteria.

With a chocolate crumb clinging at the corner of his mouth, Jaemin added, “Hey. I almost forgot, but I’ve gotta tell you something.”

“What is it?”

“It’s about Huang Renjun.”

Jeno cocked his head. “What about him?”

“He was asking me about you the other day.”

Jeno wondered if Jaemin could sense his complete astonishment. He forced himself to remain straight-faced, which, thankfully, he had much practice at. “Asking what?”

“I don’t know. Like, weird stuff.” His gaze flitted down to Jeno’s chest, where he knew the locket lay beneath his shirt. “Like… that.”

Jeno’s hand flew to the locket without thinking. “Oh. Well…” He remembered the sharp pain as his skull hit Renjun’s desk. Renjun’s hand, the gold chain wrapped around it. “He was asking me the same thing. What did you tell him?”

“Nothing. It’s not my place to say.” Jaemin nonchalantly shoved another bite of brownie into his mouth, then said while chewing, “I have to admit, though. I’m pretty curious, myself.”

“Is that so?”

“You can tell me what the photo inside is, you know. I won’t make fun of you.”

Jeno believed him, but it didn’t make any difference. It was his secret, and he wanted to keep it to himself. “Nice try, but no thanks.”

Jaemin produced a playful sigh. “Fine. But you should know he was asking. And he called you weird, too. I think he’s got it out for you.”

Jeno frowned. “I think you may be right.”

\---

The only time Jeno removed his locket was at baseball practice.

He wore it all day, all night as he slept, even in the shower. But not at practice. It was because it was the place he felt it was most vulnerable to breaking, in case he took a hard fall on the field, or a stray ball struck him right in the chest. He knew he would not be able to forgive himself if the locket broke in such a stupid, preventable way. So he left it in his locker, dangling on a hook, after covertly unclasping it and slipping it out from under his shirt. He did not want his teammates to see it, just in case they began asking questions. There were already too many people interested in that locket for comfort.

Presently, he did exactly that, turning sideways to conceal the view of his open locker and quickly placing the locket inside. Then he stripped out of his clothes and pulled on his uniform, while some of the other boys filtered into the locker room, laughing raucously at an unheard joke.

“Hey, Jeno,” one of them said -- a perky freshman with a huge grin and a cowlick poking up unflatteringly at the crown of his head. “Can you help with my swing today?”

Bashful, Jeno responded, “You should ask Wonyong. He’s got a great swing.”

“Not as good as you, though.”

Jeno was aware that he was of unusual talent. He’d been playing baseball since he was in elementary school, rising as a star pitcher. But he was great with a bat, too, and fast around the field; a gifted all-rounder. On top of that, studying came easy to him, being blessed by an excellent memory. He’d already been scouted by four universities offering to pay his tuition. He was still weighing his options, but at least he knew for sure that by the time college decisions came around, he was guaranteed a spot somewhere, and a position on their baseball team.

Still, he tried to remain humble. He did not want to lose any friends by becoming big-headed; he’d lost too many friends in his life already. And he was more concerned by happiness than success, anyway. He’d never play baseball again if he could only be happy.

They walked out towards the diamond. In the distance, he saw the track team congregating, stretching and chatting. He could pick Renjun out by his small stature, his thin legs, the several feet he stood away from his teammates as if he thought he might catch a disease if he spoke to them. Jeno had heard of Renjun’s tendency to drop clubs every semester and begin a new one -- it had been a subject of school gossip, the other students wondering why exactly he did it.

Renjun broke off with another boy to begin his warm-ups. Jeno thought he had never seen someone trying so hard to act against his nature as Renjun -- the boy who loved to draw, the boy who stuck needles through insects with such exquisite focus and precision that he must have been built for it -- running around the track, forcing his body to participate in a task in which it clearly had no interest.

Jeno had also noticed that Renjun had tried most of the school’s sports -- track, tennis, soccer, basketball, volleyball -- but he had never joined the baseball team.

Jeno understood why, but it still stung, the way Renjun kept his distance.

\---

Jeno’s father was sitting on their enclosed back porch when Jeno arrived home. The porch was both of their favorite places in their house, more like a living room than their actual living room. Winters were always sad, when it was too cold to go out; but now that it was spring, they had returned, to where they’d tucked their plush chairs at its end, beside the shelf filled with books and potted plants and the little porcelain figurines Jeno’s mother had used to collect -- angels, teddy bears, a pinto horse with a glossy pink nose. They filled that porch with life, and would sit, often in a comfortable silence, and read or do puzzles or simply enjoy the feel of the breeze as it slipped through the porch screens.

“How was school?” his father asked, sitting in his chair. In his lap was a heavy old cookbook, its white cover having gone yellow-brown with age. He wet his thumb and forefinger and turned the page, looking for his next baking recipe to tackle.

“Fine,” Jeno said, crossing the porch to sit beside him. As soon as he did, his cat, Bongsik, ran in from the kitchen, jumping up into his lap and curling into a ball. He stroked the top of her head, and she purred.

“How was practice?”

“Also fine.”

His father raised his brows questioningly, but didn’t press further. Jeno loved that about him -- that he was always there to talk to if he needed it, but he knew when to leave Jeno alone, too, and let him work things out on his own. Jeno heard his friends talk frequently about arguing with their parents the way most teenagers did, about school or curfews or chores, but Jeno and his father never argued. Jeno chalked it up to the death of his mother -- as tragic as that was, it had also brought him and his father closer. More than anything, they respected each other. Jeno was thankful everyday for it.

His father removed his glasses and set them on the mosaiced side table. Without them, Jeno could see what he himself might look like in thirty years' time: the same face, the same hard, angular profile, but with his hair beginning to gray and permanent lines forming at the sides of his mouth and eyes.

“You got a letter in the mail today,” his father said, “from Yerim. I left it on your desk.”

Jeno looked away, down into his lap. Bongsik, as if she could sense Jeno’s unease, rubbed her head against his hand.

“Are you going to open it?” his father asked.

Jeno got up and set Bongsik on the floor, then made his way towards his bedroom.

\---

_Yerim was the last to join their trio, but it was so natural, inevitable. She moved into the house exactly halfway between Jeno’s and Renjun’s, at the very middle of the street, on a warm summer day just two months after Jeno and Renjun first became friends themselves._

_The two of them were walking down the sidewalk when they saw the moving truck being unloaded in her driveway. Yerim was lifting a tote up the front steps. Jeno waved at her, and she set it down so she could wave back._

_“Do you know her?” Renjun asked._

_“No.”_

_“Why are you waving at her?”_

_“What do you mean? I want to make friends with her.”_

_Renjun seemed highly skeptical of making new friends. Jeno approached Yerim anyway, and Renjun, not wanting to be left behind, followed, though he half-hid behind Jeno’s back._

_“Hi,” Jeno said. “What’s your name?”_

_“I’m Yerim.” She was a skinny but tough-looking girl, knobbly kneed and wearing short overalls. Her hair was in a tight braid and her bangs were pinned back with butterfly clips. “What about you?”_

_“I’m Jeno, and this is Renjun.” He nudged Renjun forward so Yerim could properly see him. “We live on this street. Are you moving in here?”_

_“Yeah. My dad got a new job, so we moved to be closer to it.”_

_“Oh. Do you want to play with us?”_

_Yerim did not need to be asked. She shouted a word to her mother to let her know she was leaving, and began bounding down the sidewalk, launching into a cartwheel. Her flip flop flew off her foot and whacked Renjun in the face._

_“Hey,” Renjun cried, clutching his nose._

_Yerim responded with a devious giggle._

_“Jeno, I don’t like her. She’s laughing at me, when she just --”_

_Jeno was not really paying attention, because he was laughing too, at the look of shocked indignance on Renjun’s face._

_It turned out that they needed someone like Yerim. She had imagination. Though Jeno and Renjun were inquisitive, playful, they were not imaginative -- Jeno was a practical boy, and Renjun was so concerned by the world under his feet that he did not consider the worlds beyond it. Yerim was always coming up with something new, a made-up game, a fantasy kingdom for them to inhabit._

_“Let’s pretend we’re fairies,” she said once, swinging around the trunk of a tree. She’d been the one to bring them out into the woods the first time, telling them it would be their own special place. Jeno liked how unafraid she was of getting dirty and rough, always swinging from branches and jumping in mud puddles._

_“I’m not gonna be a fairy,” Renjun objected. “Fairies are for girls.”_

_“It’s not a big deal,” Jeno said. “We’re only playing.”_

_“Well, I don’t like that kind of thing.”_

_Yerim gave a big, exaggerated sigh. “You don’t like anything, Renjun.”_

_“I do, too. I like all kinds of stuff.”_

_“Then we can do something you like next time. I wanna play fairies.”_

_Jeno quickly became used to their arguing. He could tell that, despite Renjun’s performative annoyance, he was actually very fond of Yerim. It was almost like their bickering was their own separate game that they played, just the two of them, and even if they acted bratty towards each other, they were really both having fun._

_On occasion, though, it escalated. Like one time, Renjun had brought his jars with him up on their hill to do some bug hunting, and with the biggest smile Jeno had ever seen on his face, he came racing up from the bushes, hands cupped together._

_“I caught one! It’s a stick bug!”_

_“A stick bug?”_

_“I never caught one before…” Renjun knelt beside one of his jars and carefully fed the bug inside. It was thin, brown, with long legs like a spider. “It’s only a baby one, I think.”_

_“Eww,” Yerim said, sticking her tongue out. Even though she liked the dirt, bugs were the one thing she was afraid of. “You and your bugs. Keep it away from me.”_

_Renjun smirked. He twisted the lid onto the jar, then carried it over to her. “What do you mean? Don’t you think it’s cute?”_

_Yerim shrieked and put a hand out as a shield. “I told you, Renjun. Keep it away! You know I hate bugs.”_

_“It’s only a baby.” Teasingly, he held it even closer._

_“I said, stop --” Yerim whacked the jar out of Renjun’s hands, and it crashed against a tree. The glass shattered, and when Renjun raced over to it, the bug had scrambled off into the grass, nowhere to be seen._

_He dropped to his knees, bottom lip quivering. “You broke it -- he got away --”_

_“You had it coming. I told you.”_

_“I’ve been trying to catch a stick bug for years.” His voice was scratchy with rising tears. One dribbled over, streaking to his chin. “And you made me lose it!”_

_Yerim crossed her arms. “It was your own fault --”_

_“Come on, you two,” Jeno said. He made his way between them. “Don’t start fighting.”_

_Renjun cried, “But she --”_

_“I know. Let’s just calm down and both say sorry. Okay?”_

_“I don’t have anything to say sorry for,” Yerim muttered._

_Jeno fixed her with a hard stare._

_“Fine,” she said. “I’m sorry, Renjun. I shouldn’t have broken your jar.”_

_Jeno turned to Renjun. “Your turn.”_

_“I’m sorry for teasing you.”_

_“There. Now we’re all friends again. Let’s pick up the glass.”_

_They did, tugging the shards from the soft dirt of the hollow, anger forgotten. Jeno would always be their mediator, the one least likely to fly off the handle. While Yerim brought her imagination, Jeno brought his steadiness, his kindness, his ability to always see both sides. He thought there would never be an argument they couldn’t overcome, so long as they stuck together, a perfect trio._

_They would fall apart three years later._

\---

_Dear Jeno,_

_I’m writing because you never respond to my texts or calls anymore. I don’t know why you don’t want to talk to me. Did I do something wrong? I never meant to make you angry, I promise. If it was something I did, just tell me, and I won’t do it again._

_I miss both you and Renjun so much. I wish I hadn’t moved so far away, because I would still come and visit you two if I could. I think all the time about how we used to play when we were little. We were so silly. Remember the time we made that boxfort in your backyard? Your dad had just bought a new chair, and it came in this huge box, so me and you cut a door in the front of it. And Renjun decorated the outside with his markers so that it looked like a proper house, with windows and curtains and paneling and everything. We took all the blankets off your bed, and your dad was complaining about all the laundry he’d have to do after we dragged them through the grass to our boxfort, because we wanted it to be comfy inside so we could spend the night in it like a tent. When I think about memories like that, I start feeling like I might cry. Do you ever think about that stuff? Do you ever remember some little thing that happened years ago, and_

Jeno tore Yerim’s letter in half.

He would not read the rest of it. He did not have any hard feelings towards her -- nothing had really been her fault. But it didn’t change the fact that reading her words was so terribly painful that he could not bear it. That’s why he’d stop responding to her messages. He didn’t even open them most of the time. He knew it hurt her, but he had to do it. Otherwise, those messages would make him think about the past, and thinking about the past made him fragile.

Just in case he started feeling regretful and made the mistake of trying to read it again, Jeno tore it into smaller pieces, so small it would have taken hours to piece back together, and he tossed them in his wastebasket.

He wondered if Yerim sent letters to Renjun, too. Maybe they still texted each other every day.

Jeno stood from his desk and walked to the window. He saw the roof of Renjun’s apartment complex peaking over the trees, and he wondered if Renjun ever looked out his own window, towards his house. Maybe he was doing it right now, and they were both looking at each other without knowing it, always on each other’s minds.

\---

_Jeno’s mother died when he was ten. He and his father had known she was going to die for quite some time -- she’d been restricted to her hospital room for months, and everyday, she was thinner, frailer, looking as if she might crumble from even the lightest touch. They had been prepared for her to pass, they thought. But really, there was no preparing for such a thing. Even if it had happened five, ten years later, it would have been a knife in the heart, a splitting open, an exposure of every bone and nerve and weakness._

_Jeno took a week off of school to mourn. Aside from the day of the funeral, he and his father stayed in the house, lying together on the couch, watching TV, wrapping themselves in blankets. They ate cereal for most of their meals. Jeno heard his father crying every night from behind his bedroom door, and at the sound of it, he could not help but begin crying, too._

_When he returned to school, it was strangely quiet. He wondered at first if it was only his perception, because everything had seemed strangely quiet since his mother’s death, as if he’d been plunged underwater, the noise around him nothing but a distant, echoey blurb. But at recess, he realized he was not imagining the quiet. The other children were eyeing him, speaking behind raised hands, not seeming to know how to approach him._

_Finally, someone broke the silence._

_“Hey, Jeno,” said one of his classmates. “I’m sorry about your mom. I hope you aren’t too sad. Do you want to play foursquare?”_

They know. They all know.

_Jeno felt the tears returning. He didn’t want everyone to know. He didn’t want them treading gently around him, treating him like he was breakable. He wanted things to be normal. He wanted his mother back._

_He got up, and raced inside to the bathroom._

_Sitting on top of the toilet lid, he cried. He didn’t try to cry quietly. Everyone already knew what had happened -- it wasn’t as if he had anything to hide._

_He heard the bathroom door open, and then a rapping on his stall._

_“Jeno?”_

_Reluctantly, he slid back the hatch and let the stall door fall open._

_It was Huang Renjun. Jeno did not know him well. Renjun was very quiet and usually kept to himself. At recess, he was always out in the grass, combing through it and digging in the dirt, or climbing trees until the teachers had to shout at him to come down. Jeno knew that Renjun lived in his neighborhood, but even then, when he passed him on the sidewalk and offered a friendly wave, Renjun would move right by._

_But now he was knocking on Jeno’s stall, calling his name._

_Renjun crouched in front of where Jeno sat. “Are you crying because of your mom?”_

_Jeno blurted out in a sob, “How come everyone knows?”_

_“The teacher told us,” Renjun explained. He plucked some toilet paper from the dispenser and offered it to Jeno in place of a tissue. “She said you were gone last week because your mom died and that we should be extra nice to you to make up for it.”_

_Jeno was thankful for the paper, because the tears came harder now, spilling messily down his cheeks. “Why would she tell everybody that?”_

_“I don’t know,” Renjun said. “I don’t understand why grown-ups do that kind of thing. Like they think they always know what’s best.”_

_Jeno realized his nose was running when the snot touched his top lip and, embarrassed, he mopped it away._

_“You can keep crying, if you want,” Renjun said. “I don’t have a mom either. I won’t make fun of you.”_

_Jeno blinked. “You don’t?”_

_“No. My mom died when I was real little. I can’t remember her very good.” Renjun, tired of crouching, plopped down on the tile floor, leaning back on his palms. “You’re the first kid I’ve met who doesn’t have a mom, either.”_

_Jeno did not feel so terrible anymore. Even if Renjun could not remember his mother, he knew what it was like to be without, to feel that empty space over his shoulder for the rest of his life. And Jeno, too, had never met another boy without a mom. He felt normal suddenly, sitting on the toilet lid while Renjun sat on the bathroom floor. He felt understood._

_“Do you miss her?” Jeno asked._

_“Kind of.” Renjun scratched idly at his chin, thinking. “Since I can’t remember her, it’s a weird sort of missing -- but I wonder a lot what it would be like if she were still alive. I think I would be happier.”_

_Jeno wondered about the ways in which Renjun was unhappy. He wanted to ask, but they were not friends yet. Maybe if they were closer, he could ask such a thing, and maybe, if they talked about it, they could figure out how to make that unhappiness smaller._

_Jeno wanted to be Renjun’s friend._

_And Renjun seemed to want this, too, because he said, “Wanna go catch some bugs with me? It’s fun.”_

_Jeno sniffled, and nodded._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> that was faster than i anticipated
> 
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	3. Renjun

_The first time Renjun went to one of Jeno’s baseball games, they were eleven years old. Jeno had invited him and Yerim with a shy smile. While he’d talked about his games frequently, when pressed for details, he’d always dodged, like there was something to be embarrassed about._

_Renjun would find out quickly that this was not the case. Jeno was very, very good at baseball. Really, he was shy at his own propensity for it, as if the mere act of inviting them along was like rubbing his talent in their faces. At least, this is what Renjun would conclude by the evening’s end._

_Jeno’s dad drove them all there. Jeno sat in the passenger’s seat, and Renjun and Yerim in the back, playing cat’s cradle._

_“You did it wrong,” Renjun told her. “You're supposed to go over, not under.”_

_“You can do it both ways, dummy.”_

_“No. Now it’s gonna get all screwed up.”_

_Yerim pinched his arm, and he balled up the piece of yarn and tossed it in her face._

_Jeno turned around, maneuvering beneath his seatbelt, to say, “I hope you guys won’t be too bored. Baseball isn’t always exciting. A lot of it is waiting around for someone to finally hit the ball.”_

_“We won’t be bored,” Yerim assured him. “We’re gonna be cheering for you the whole time. I’ll even write a special cheer, and me and Renjun can do it together.”_

_“I’m not a cheerleader,” Renjun muttered._

_Jeno seemed to notice Renjun’s bitter mood. He did not know it, but just the previous night, Renjun had been left at home alone until two in the morning. He hated being left alone. He would triple check that the front door was locked, then pull the blinds down over all the windows because he was afraid that he might look up and see a stranger watching him in the night. He should have been used to it by then -- he was often left home alone -- but he’d still shivered in his bed, comforter up over his eyes, until he’d eventually fallen asleep. When his father finally had returned from the bar, he'd been so knockout drunk that he’d stumbled into their kitchen counter and knocked a dirty plate onto the floor, shattering it. Renjun had thought it was an intruder, and begun to panic so desperately he could not breathe. But then he’d recognized his father’s slurred swearing, and run out to see what was the matter. It had taken much pleading and pulling at the hem of his shirt, but eventually, Renjun had coaxed his father to bed, even having gone so far as to remove his shoes to make him more comfortable. When he’d been like that, curled on the bed and unable to take care of himself, he had not seemed so big. He’d seemed pitiful. Renjun had looked down at him, perched at the edge of his bed beside his pillow, and felt completely miserable._

_His father had met his eyes, gaze unfocused in his stupor, and called Renjun by his mother’s name._

_For some reason, it had felt like a head-turning slap. Renjun had left his father on the bed, and returned to his room. He did not fall back asleep._

_Jeno was an intuitive boy. He knew that something was wrong. So he unbuckled himself, took off his baseball cap, and bent far over the front seat divider to place the hat on Renjun’s head._

_“Sit down!” his father warned. “Jeno, you’ve got to keep your seatbelt on.”_

_“I know. I’m sorry.” He quickly rebuckled himself, then added, “You can wear that for today, Renjun.”_

_Renjun fingered the brim of the hat, and smiled._

_They stopped on the way to get slushies at a gas station, then arrived at the field. Jeno ran out to his team, while his father, Renjun, and Yerim filed into the bleachers. It was a hot summer day, and Renjun’s legs burned where they touched the metal seats. He propped his feet on the bench in front of him to keep his thighs from frying. Yerim slurped on her slushie beside him. She had gotten a blue one, and Renjun a red one, and she kept eyeing his with a suspicious expression._

_“I wanna try yours,” she said._

_“No way. I don’t want your germs.”_

_“But I wanna try both flavors. You can try mine, too.”_

_“No way.” He scrunched his nose and held his slushie as far away from her as he could._

_“I bet Jeno would let me, if he had a slushie.”_

_“Jeno doesn’t want your germs, either.”_

_Yerim looked seconds away from throwing her slushie in Renjun’s face, but then Jeno’s father sat up taller and said, “Look, the game is starting!”_

_Renjun did, in fact, find baseball to be boring. The batters couldn’t even hit the balls half the time, and anytime it seemed like the action was starting up, it would stall again. Renjun pulled Jeno’s cap low over his eyes, wondering if he could sneak in a few minutes of sleep to make up for how much he’d lost last night._

_He didn’t get the chance, because Yerim whacked him on the arm, and said, “Jeno’s batting!”_

_Renjun sighed and leaned forward to watch. Jeno stood at home base, doing a tiny practice swing, adjusting his helmet to sit properly on his head. Then he stilled, nothing moving except his chest as he breathed, in and out, in and out, and Renjun saw a look of pure, intense focus in his eyes like he’d never seen before -- the look of a boy in his element._

_It only took one toss, and Jeno hit the ball so hard it flew past the diamond, past the outfield, past the far fence, lost in the green of the grass._

_The bleachers erupted in a cheer. Jeno took his home run jog around the bases, grinning to himself, and when he returned to home, his teammates ran up to him and jumped and whooped, arms wrapping around his shoulders and his neck, hands ruffling his hair. A crazed celebration for their ace._

_To Renjun’s left, Jeno’s father was standing and clapping, pride evident._

_Renjun felt something unwelcome stirring in his gut. He pushed it down, and started clapping, too._

_The game ended with Jeno’s team winning by a large margin. He ran over after, the sheer remnants of sweat drops smeared over his forehead, a spot of dirt on his chin. His father met him halfway and swept him up into a hug, lifting him, grinning into his shoulder. Jeno giggled and kicked his feet joyously as he was swept in a circle, flying through the air, loved and limitless._

_Renjun watched. The feeling in his gut returned, scratching at his insides, seeking escape. He was too young and too lacking self-awareness to know that the emotion he felt was jealousy. Perhaps, if he’d recognized it, he might have been able to temper it. As it was, he jutted his jaw and turned around, marching back towards the car without waiting._

_“Hey!” He heard Jeno’s feet thump against the ground, then patter behind him as he tried to catch up. He ducked into Renjun’s peripheral, wearing the same shy smile he had when he’d asked him to come along. “What did you think of the game? It wasn’t too boring, was it?”_

_Renjun blew a breath out through his nose. There it was again, Jeno’s little act. His stupid humility. His pretend imperfection._

_“It was boring,” Renjun snapped. “I almost fell asleep.”_

_“Oh.” Jeno’s voice was small, his previous happiness dashed. “I’m sorry.”_

_Renjun picked up the pace, trying to get Jeno out of his sight._

_“Is everything okay?” Jeno asked._

_Renjun stopped so abruptly it kicked up dirt at his heels. He whirled around, face red, hands furled into fists. “I don’t want to talk to you. Just leave me alone.” He tore Jeno’s hat from his head, and held it out to him. “Take this back. I don’t want it.”_

_Jeno just stared at it, completely bewildered._

_Renjun tossed the hat onto the ground with a smack. Behind them, Jeno’s father and Yerim were watching, uncertain of what was happening. Jeno’s father took one step forward, as if he might intervene. Renjun turned back around and ran to the car, pushing inside and slamming the door behind him._

_It was a minute before the others joined him, completely silent aside from the squeaking of the leather seats beneath them and the clicking of their seatbelts. Jeno’s father started the car and backed out of the parking lot. His eyes kept flicking up into the rearview mirror, glancing at Renjun, who sat curled with his face pressed against the window, brows knitted. Renjun could feel those glances like the pricks of pins, knowing he was being regarded with suspicion. He didn’t care. He wanted to be miserable._

_Through the window, he could see the wing mirror, and Jeno’s reflection in it. He was staring down into his lap at the crumpled, dirty baseball cap that he’d picked off the ground, looking like a boy who’d just lost the biggest game of his life._

\---

Renjun watched the back of Jeno’s head and drew in his sketchbook. He only drew in class when he thought no one was looking, and he always made sure his sketchbook was half-covered by another book to ensure his privacy.

Their social studies class was nearly over, and their teacher passed around a handout with their homework assignment on it. “This is going to be a partner project,” he explained. “Groups of two only. You’re going to research one of the ancient religions we’ve discussed in class, and make a short presentation. Everyone choose your partners, and then we’ll assign topics.”

Renjun’s pencil stopped mid-stroke. He dropped it on his desk, stood, and walked quickly ahead to Jeno’s desk. He leaned against it, and stuck out a leg to make sure Jeno was trapped.

“Let’s be partners,” he said.

Jeno cast him a wary glance. “Sorry -- I think I might be partners with Taewoo instead --”

“No. You’re going to be partners with me.”

“I don’t know if that’s a good idea.”

“I thought you said you weren’t angry at me. It’ll be fine.” Renjun smiled, putting on the airs of a kitten too unpracticed to cut with its claws. “Plus, you live close, so it’ll be easy for us to get together and work on it.”

Jeno must have known better. Renjun was not a kitten. Not even close. But when he looked helplessly around the room, it was clear that the other students had already gotten in their pairs.

He had no other choice. Renjun’s smile deepened.

“Alright,” Jeno said stiffly.

“Great. I’ll come over today. How’s three-thirty?”

“That’s fine.”

Renjun perched on the desk’s edge, and swung his legs like an overjoyed child.

When their topics were assigned and class was let out, Renjun began to pack his things. Jeno left before him, hightailing it out of there as if he were afraid Renjun might speak to him again. Renjun watched him until he could no longer see the glint of the chain at the back of his neck.

“Hey.” One of Renjun’s friends approached him, messenger bag slung lazily halfway down his arm. “What’s the big idea? I thought you and me were gonna pair up.”

“Not this time,” Renjun said. He slid his sketchbook into his backpack, at the very bottom, out of sight.

“Why’d you pair up with Lee Jeno? Are you friends now or something?”

“He isn’t my friend,” Renjun asserted. He yanked on his bag’s zipper harder than strictly necessary, metal teeth buzzing. “He’s weird.”

“I don’t get it. I see you talking to him all the time now.”

“I can talk to whoever I want.”

His friend smirked, seeming to think that what he said next was very clever. “I heard a rumor that you were asking one of the other seniors about him. What, are you obsessed with him?”

Renjun went still. He put on his cold stare, the one he’d learnt from his father, and said quietly, “Don’t talk to me again.”

“What are you --”

“You heard me. Don’t talk to me again. I’ve got enough friends. I don’t need one like you.”

The boy stood with his mouth half-open, shellshocked. Renjun swerved around him and out of the classroom.

\---

At precisely three-thirty, Renjun stood on Jeno’s doorstep. After he knocked, waiting for it to be answered, he forced himself to stand straighter, letting out a long breath, collecting himself. He had a reason to be there. He would accomplish it.

Jeno swung the door open. “Hey,” he said.

Renjun walked in without a word and kicked his shoes off in the corner. It looked mostly the same as it had been the last time he’d been there, around five years ago. One-story, but spacious, and though it was spotlessly clean, it was not empty or uninhabited-looking. Everything in it seemed homemade, like the raw wood table in the front hall and the thick quilt thrown over the back of the living room sofa, each square of it made from a different pattern. On every wall was a memento. A collection of framed family photos beside the television, birthday and Christmas cards from relatives displayed on a window sill, a fingerpainted art project Jeno had made in kindergarten hanging by the front door.

“Is your dad home?” Renjun asked.

“No. He’s at work still. He’ll be back soon.” Jeno’s father worked as a prosecutor in the district attorney’s office. Like Jeno himself, he was a hard-worker, exceptionally soft-spoken, and known around town as a kind and fair man, respected for his intelligence and diligence in his profession. The kind of man Jeno might be someday.

Renjun walked further in, not waiting for permission, scanning the house. He could remember sitting at the coffee table and drawing comics together on loose-leaf paper. He would always do the sketch, and let Jeno color it in -- he was very good about staying inside the lines. He also remembered the nights when he and Yerim would come over for dinner, all three of them sitting at the island counter on tall chairs and talking to each other with their mouths full. It had always been nice to have a home-cooked meal. At home, Renjun usually resorted to frozen food or a box of crackers, since neither he nor his father could cook.

Presently, he slipped into the kitchen, gliding his fingers over the granite countertops. Just like it used to be. It was funny, how much they had changed, yet everything around them had stayed the same.

“Um.” Jeno appeared behind him in the doorway, awkwardly shuffling his feet. “Did you want a drink or something?”

“Oh.” Renjun had nearly forgotten about Jeno. _Focus, stupid. He’s the whole reason you’re here._ “Sure.”

“You know where the glasses are.”

“I’ve forgotten,” Renjun lied, leaning back against the kitchen counter.

Jeno sighed and reached for the cabinet to the left of the sink. He filled a glass, another piece of the past that Renjun had not recalled until just then -- the glasses with the little painted circle near their lip, which they had used all the time as children. There was one with a blue circle, a green circle, and a pink circle. Jeno had always used the one with the green circle, because it was his favorite color. Meanwhile, Yerim had always nabbed the blue one just to make Renjun angry, and he’d be stuck with pink. Jeno, to avoid a fight, would then swap with Renjun. “Here,” he would say, trading them without being asked. “I don’t mind pink.” A little gesture, but a meaningful one.

Perhaps Jeno did not place any sentimental value on such a thing, and it was without thinking that he gave Renjun that green-rimmed cup now. Renjun studied it, turning it under the light from the kitchen window, making it glint like the clasp of Jeno’s locket.

Then, he dropped it in the middle of the floor. It shattered, and the water splattered the front of the stove and cabinets.

“Oops,” Renjun said. “My hand slipped.”

Jeno looked down at the mess in disbelief. He seemed to be waiting for Renjun to stoop and begin picking it up. When he did not, Jeno did it himself, collecting the pieces carefully in his palms, soaking the knees of his jeans. “I don’t remember you being so clumsy,” he murmured. 

“Sorry,” Renjun responded, unconvincingly.

“It’s fine.” Once Jeno gathered all the shards he could see, he tossed them in the trash can. Then, he retrieved a second glass -- the one with the blue circle -- and handed it to Renjun. “Here. If you wanted a drink -- I’ll wipe the rest up, just --”

Renjun, just as he had the first time, dropped the glass. It made a resounding tinker, the pieces of it sliding around in the spilt water.

Jeno was not fooled again. “Renjun.”

“Pick it up.”

Jeno hesitated. “What are you doing?”

“I said to pick it up.”

Slowly, Jeno lowered himself to kneeling again, his head bowed like a servant. Renjun watched and smiled.

“I could break every glass in this house, and you’d still pick up after me.”

“Stop it,” Jeno said.

“It’s true. You’re a total pushover. It’s pathetic.”

“I don’t want to fight with you, Renjun.”

“I’m not looking for a fight. I’m just trying to see where the line is.” He toed one of the shards of glass with his socked foot, but did not bend to retrieve it. Instead, he slid it in Jeno’s direction like a taunt. “What if I hit you? Would you just turn the other cheek? You’ve always been rather Christ-like.”

Jeno didn’t answer. He tugged a rag from a nearby drawer and began soaking up the water.

_I could do anything._

Renjun reveled in it. He liked having that kind of control. He could not control many things in his life -- his father’s drinking, his mother’s absence, his complete unremarkableness. But he could control Jeno.

“Let’s just get this project over with, okay?” Jeno tossed the wet rag into the sink and walked towards his bedroom, as if nothing had happened.

Though Renjun liked to control him, part of him wanted Jeno to snap, just once. That way he would know that he’d really, truly gotten under his skin.

\---

They’d decided on a trifold poster for their presentation, which Jeno must have picked up after school, as it was leaning against the wall by his bedside. He pulled it out and laid it over the carpet, then collected some markers and a pair of scissors from his desk.

It went quietly for a while. Renjun, despite his motives, didn’t want a failing grade, since his grades were one of the few things he had any pride in (though he still wished they could be just a few points higher, at least high enough for him to stand out). They’d been assigned the ancient Roman pantheon, and Jeno flipped idly through their textbook, searching for relevant material. Renjun had somehow gotten stuck with the job of writing out all their text, because Jeno insisted he had prettier handwriting. Renjun had wanted to throw his marker in Jeno’s face, but instead committed himself to the task, biding his time until the right moment presented itself.

They began to make small talk. It was desperately uncomfortable, but Renjun liked it that way.

“How’s you father?” Jeno asked him.

Renjun could not tell if this was a pointed question. Maybe Jeno was genuinely interested. Or maybe he was trying to needle Renjun as innocuously as possible.

“He’s the same as always,” Renjun answered. “He’s a drunk and a loner and we don’t get along. Maybe he’ll finally drink himself into a coma one of these days. Is that what you wanted to hear?”

“No. I’m sorry to hear that.”

“Don’t be. Let’s talk about you instead.” Renjun could not hide the small smirk that crept onto his face as he asked, “Are you seeing anyone right now, Jeno? Did you meet a nice girl?”

Jeno froze, mid-scissor stroke as he cut a photo for their poster. “No. I haven’t.”

“That’s a shame. I’m sure any girl would like to date the ace of the baseball team.”

“I’m not interested in dating right now, so that doesn’t really matter.”

Renjun eyes flicked up. He could see the barest outline of the locket’s pendant through Jeno’s t-shirt. _Surely, because he’s still hung up on the girl inside._ That was the reason he’d come there. He’d been hoping that Jeno might have taken the locket off after school and left it on his bureau or something, somewhere where Renjun could sneak a look at it. But it was clear Jeno kept it on all day.

_He has to take it off sometime._

Renjun tried a new tactic.

“How’s the baseball season?” He inched a little closer along the carpet, slowly, like a leopard circling its prey. “Have you been winning?”

“I thought you didn’t care about baseball.”

Renjun leaned his chin on his palm, looking up at Jeno from beneath his lashes. “Maybe I’ve changed over the years. I ought to stop by practice sometime. I’ll sit on the bleachers, and I’ll watch you -- you were always a wonder to watch on the field. Completely mesmerizing.” Their knees bumped.

There was a flicker in Jeno’s gaze, half-discomfort, half-something Renjun couldn’t decipher. He stood, suddenly, rubbing the back of his neck. “I’ll be right back,” he said. “Bathroom.”

“Sure.”

Renjun listened to hear the click of the bathroom door. Once he was sure he was alone, he began to look around, starting at Jeno’s bed. Jeno kept his room immaculate, just as he always had, the sheets pulled high and straight over his pillows. Renjun let a hand rest on the mattress, just for a moment, imagining Jeno lying there at night. It was an image that fascinated him. He thought that Jeno must sleep peacefully, in his perfect house, in his perfectly clean room.

He turned to the desk. Above it was a tackboard, affixed to which was a calendar, marked with his games and upcoming tests. Around it were odds and ends -- a movie ticket, a folded letter from a college scout, a keychain bearing the name of his favorite baseball team, hung on a thumbtack by its silver hoop. And in the bottom right corner, there was a photograph.

Renjun knew this photograph. It was taken at Jeno’s thirteenth birthday, the last birthday before everything fell apart. Jeno sat on the back porch steps, wearing a huge smile that crinkled his eyes into crescents, Bongsik curled in his lap. Clinging to one arm was Yerim, who wore a shimmery pink bow in her hair, giggling into Jeno’s shoulder. Her palms were dirty, as though they’d just been playing in the mud.

The other side of the photo should have shown Renjun, leaning into Jeno’s side. Renjun could not remember if he’d been smiling properly for the camera, or if he’d been shooting a glare towards one of the other two for their flagrant, obvious, unsaid affection. It was impossible to know which -- he’d been cut out of the picture. His little blue shoe could still be seen at the very edge of the frame, but the rest of him had been torn away, omitted from the happy memory.

He let out a silent laugh. _So Jeno hates me that much._ Enough to destroy any remnant of him that might still be lying around the house.

Renjun might have stared at that photograph all day, but he remembered his limited time. Quickly, he jerked open the drawer of Jeno’s desk. Sticky notes, index cards, too-sharp pencils. He pushed them aside. There had to be something that could help him. Something to give him even the smallest clue.

His hand stopped on the cover of Jeno’s planner.

He glanced back out the bedroom doorway to make sure Jeno was still in the bathroom. Then, he took the planner out and opened it on Jeno’s desk, flipping hurriedly through its pages. Homework assignments, study group sessions, honor society meetings --

In the back, written in small, almost unnoticeable handwriting, were his locker combinations, saved just in case he forgot them.

Renjun bit the inside of his cheek. Then, he tore the combinations out of the planner, folded them, and slipped them into his pant pocket.

When Jeno came back, the planner had been replaced, and Renjun was sitting on the carpet, as if he’d never moved.

“It looks like we’re nearly finished, right?” Jeno stared down at their poster, examining it from a new angle.

“I think so.” Renjun smiled. His work there was done.

\---

When he left, Jeno’s father was walking in the door from work. He did a double-take when he saw Renjun, glasses crooked on his nose.

“Renjun,” he said, voice high with disbelief. “It’s been a while.”

 _What an understatement._ Renjun wondered exactly how much Jeno’s father knew. It must have been obvious that there had been a falling out, seeing as he and Jeno had gone from best friends to strangers seemingly overnight. But perhaps he did not know why it had happened. Renjun suspected the latter -- though Jeno and his father were close, it seemed unlikely he would share something so raw and personal, even with him.

“It’s nice to see you,” Renjun responded, not really meaning it.

“Staying for dinner?”

“He’s on his way out now,” Jeno said quickly, as if he were afraid Renjun might jump on the invitation. He walked him to the door, holding it open for him, manners still impeccable despite his clear exasperation.

The sky had begun to dim, made a murky blue-orange, framed by telephone wire. Renjun’s apartment lay in the distance, its windows dark, his father not home.

“I’ll see you at school tomorrow,” Jeno tossed out, clearly hoping it would be the last thing either of them said. He began to shut the door.

Renjun, of course, would not give him the satisfaction.

“Jeno.”

The boy paused, lips pressed together, seeming to consider whether it was worth engaging. But he was Jeno, which meant he could not be callous. Instead, he tiredly leaned against the doorway, hands jammed in his pockets. “What is it?”

“Does Yerim still talk to you?”

It was not the question Jeno expected. It seemed to puncture him, draining him of his breath, deflating him like a flat tire. “Yes. But I don’t answer her.”

“Why not? Are you angry at her, too?”

“No. I’m not angry.”

“Are you still in love with her?”

Jeno was not surprised this time. He smiled softly, as if the question had tickled him, and for some reason, it read to Renjun like pity.

“I was never in love with her, Renjun,” he said. “Never. You’ve had it wrong this whole time.”

It was Renjun’s turn to be shocked. The words left him empty, guidepostless. It was a revelation.

“But -- if it wasn’t her --” He stumbled through the sentence, desperate, voice rising to a shout. “Who’s inside your locket?”

Jeno shut the door.

Renjun stood alone on the sidewalk, mind racing, heart slamming against his ribcage. Jeno had to be lying. After everything that had happened, if Jeno did not love Yerim, why had it turned out the way it did? If Jeno did not love Yerim, who was he hiding over his heart, keeping his love for them a secret?

He had not anticipated this. He could not control it.

Renjun felt for the slip of paper in his pocket. It was the only way to find out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> WE BACK....... and things continue to be Angry and Sad
> 
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	4. Jeno

Jeno stood at the top of the hill in the forest. He had not been there since he was thirteen, but found he could still remember the little things that had been the set dressing for his childhood -- the flat, table-like rock at the center of the hollow; the fallen tree where Yerim used to arrange her glass bottles (though the bottles themselves had gone missing, perhaps having been knocked over by the wind and rolled away); the hole in one of the tree’s trunks, where Renjun had stuffed a bunch of acorns as a gift for the squirrels.

Jeno turned away from the hollow so he faced down the hillside, and shut his eyes. Then, he threw his locket as hard as he could.

All those pitches had paid off. The locket landed so far in the distance that he could not even hear it hit the grass. There would be no way to find it among the bushes and bramble thickets and fallen leaves -- exactly the way he wanted it. Love, he’d decided, was too frustrating to hold on to. He was finished with it.

When he returned home, his father was in the kitchen, stirring cookie dough in a huge metal bowl. A bit of flour had gotten stuck to his chin, but he did not seem to notice, tongue between his teeth as he forced the wooden spoon in circles. It seemed to take a great amount of effort.

“Jeno,” he said. “Where’ve you been? You nearly missed my cooking show.”

His cooking show was when he stood in the kitchen, trying a new recipe, and announced the entire process to Jeno step-by-step, usually as Jeno sat at the dining room table doing his homework. His father liked to put on the voice of one of those TV show chefs, pretending he knew what he was doing, made especially funny when he did something doofy like spill cake batter on his shirt or drop an egg on the floor.

“Just taking a walk,” Jeno responded, approaching the fridge.

His father gave him a skeptical but soft stare. “Is everything alright lately?”

“What do you mean?”

“Well.” He tapped the spoon on the edge of the bowl, trying to shake off the clinging cookie dough. “After Renjun was here yesterday, I was a little worried.”

Jeno scoffed and cracked the tab on a can of Coke. “I don’t know what you’d be worried about. We were just working on a school project.”

“The last time I saw him here was five years ago,” his father said carefully. “I was just shocked to see him again.”

It had been very sudden. One day, Jeno, Renjun, and Yerim had been playing together in the backyard just like they always did. And then, the next day, Jeno had come home and shut himself in his bedroom and cried. His father had tried to breach the issue only once, knocking on Jeno’s door and whispering, “Do you want to talk about it?”

Jeno had not responded. His father had left him alone for the next three days, which Jeno had spent in isolation, and left his meals outside his bedroom door, along with sticky notes that said things like, “I love you!!!” and “Hope you feel better soon” and “When you’re up to it, I’ve bought a thousand piece puzzle that I desperately need your help with.”

Jeno was thankful that his father had been sensitive enough not to ask any questions about the situation. Still, it was clear that Jeno had been deeply wounded in some way, and his friendships dashed as a consequence. His father was probably right not to trust Renjun being in their house. But Jeno was older now, and so was Renjun, and if they couldn’t handle themselves like adults, then how were they going to survive past high school? They graduated in less than a year -- Jeno thought it was time to pack up his hurt feelings and tuck them beneath his bed, banished with things like childhood monsters and imaginary friends.

Jeno lingered, fridge open, feeling its cool air on his face. “I’m fine, Dad,” he said. “You don’t have to worry about me.”

His father did not seem convinced, but left it alone. He held out the spoon, a glob of dough stuck on its end, and said, “Want to try?”

“You know you aren’t supposed to eat that raw, right?”

His father sighed dreamily. “Sometimes, the best things in life are the ones that could kill you.”

Jeno took the spoon anyway and nibbled at a chocolate chunk. The sweetness was not distracting enough to keep his mind from slipping away, back to the forest, back to where he’d abandoned his locket. He hoped that, one day, it would stop haunting him.

\---

In homeroom, Jeno watched Renjun. The other boy was sitting atop one of their classmate’s desks, feet balanced on the edge of a chair, grinning as a story was recounted. Jeno wondered how it was that one person could be so different in public and in private. It was only two days ago that Renjun had come into his house and smashed his drinking glasses, wearing a smirk. And here he was, smiling with ease among his friends -- a completely ordinary high schooler.

Jeno had never seen the need for other friends when he’d had Renjun and Yerim. He’d loved them so strongly that he’d barely noticed the other kids at school. This had turned out to be a dangerous kind of friendship -- once it had broken down, he’d had no one left, not a single bridge left for him to forge a connection. He’d had to start from scratch, but no one had ever told him how hard it was to make new friends. Sometimes, a friend just fell into your lap, as Renjun and Yerim had. And when they didn’t, you had to work for them. Friendship, Jeno thought, was a learning process.

He had been lucky to have the baseball team, because those were the connections made earliest and easiest from their common interest. And then had come Jaemin, whom he’d been placed next to in algebra during their freshman year of high school. Jaemin had been so open and talkative and kind that Jeno had barely had to do any work at all -- they’d simply fallen in line, beside each other in class, beside each other in the cafeteria, beside each other on Jeno’s sofa, watching movies and reading comics. If Jeno had a best friend these days, it was Jaemin. But there were still things they did not share. The photo inside Jeno’s locket was one of them.

Renjun, too, had found his new niche. He’d always been so awkward when they were children, hiding behind Jeno anytime they met someone new, unable to carry a conversation with grace. Growing up had done him well in that sense. He even talked slickly now, Jeno thought, so slickly that no one noticed his temper. Presently, Jeno had been watching him for too long, and Renjun responded by shooting him a glare so razor sharp that it might have stung, if Jeno was not becoming used to his glares already. None of the friends around Renjun seemed to notice. He was a chameleon, but poison-tongued.

Jeno wondered if a single one of those friends knew who Renjun really was.

He received his answer after class let out, while he stood at his locker, swapping his books.

“Lee Jeno?”

Jeno looked up to see Jiseok. He was a boy Jeno could not recall ever having spoken to before, but he was a fellow senior, and they shared their first period. He also knew that Jiseok was one of Renjun’s friends, as he’d seen them leaning over their phones together and throwing paper planes at each other’s heads in homeroom.

Jeno, confused, responded, “Yeah. Jiseok, right?”

“Right. I wanted to talk to you for a minute.”

“About what?”

“About Huang Renjun.”

Jeno froze, hand gripping the cool metal of his locker door. As nonchalantly as he could manage, he said, “Renjun? He’s a friend of yours, right?”

“Not anymore.” Jiseok leaned moodily against the next locker over, crossing his arms. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. I was only asking him what was up with you two, and he got pissy and told me our friendship was over.”

 _So he doesn’t always act so innocent,_ Jeno thought. _Someone else has been feeling the brunt of his anger, too._ He tried not to read too deeply into Renjun’s sensitivity towards the mere mentioning of him. It wasn’t anything to feel special over. In fact, it was probably bad news.

“And what do you want me for?” Jeno asked. “He isn’t my responsibility.”

“I was wondering if he’d cut you away, like that, too.” Jiseok’s brow furrowed, like he was reliving the moment in his head, outraged at the injustice. “I didn’t realize he was such a prick. I don’t know who the hell he thinks he is. ‘I’ve got enough friends,’ he’d said -- he thinks he’s too good for us.”

Jeno turned awkwardly to look down the hall in the other direction, not really wanting to be a part of this conversation. “I don’t have any hard feelings towards Renjun,” he said, “so I’m not sure I’m the one you should be blabbing to.”

“Are you kidding me? He --”

“And don’t call him a prick around me again. Got it?”

Jiseok took in a sharp breath, as if slapped speechless by the unexpected response. Then he whipped around, marching away, anger obvious in the hunched line of his shoulders.

Jeno wondered if he should be angry like Jiseok was. He had every reason to be. But after five years, he still could not find an ounce of resentment within him. He could not hate Renjun, no matter how badly he wanted to.

\---

Jeno was still not used to living without his locket chain around his neck. It made him feel too light, as though an intrinsic part of him was missing. _It’s better that way,_ he thought -- intrinsic parts of you could be dangerous, too, and he was better off excising them like a tumor than allowing them to grow and fester. The locket had been a tumor. Now, it was rotting in the dead leaves and grubs, rather than around his neck. Exactly as it should be.

In the evening after dinner, he went for a bike ride. Whenever there was a lot on his mind, he liked to do something active to clear his head. It was a brisk spring night, with a sharp breeze that cooled him as he rode, almost too cool to want to stay out long; he decided to go once around the block before returning home for a hot shower.

On the opposite side of their block was a neighborhood park, with swings and jungle gyms and those little pastel-painted animals on the springs. When they were kids, he, Renjun, and Yerim had not often played there, because it had been less appealing to them than the woods -- they’d liked the dirt and mess and privacy of their hollow. But now, he slowed, easing his hands on the brakes, because Renjun was sitting on one of the swings, teetering back and forth on his toes, staring at the ground.

Jeno knew better than to speak to him. But he did anyway.

“Renjun,” he called, from the park’s edge.

Renjun looked up. A gust of wind blew over him, reddening his ears, and he ducked into the collar of his coat to try and ward it off. His eyes were guarded, which meant he felt vulnerable. Maybe that was the best time to talk to him.

Jeno leaned his bike against a tree, and slowly made his way over, stopping about ten feet away from the swingset. “What are you doing out here?” he asked, putting his hands in his pockets to keep them warm.

Renjun kept teetering. The chains of the swing creaked.

“Is your dad home?” Jeno asked. “Are you two fighting?”

“It’s none of your business,” Renjun muttered. One of his stock phrases, Jeno recognized.

“Are you planning on staying out here all night?” Jeno glanced upwards towards the sky. The sun was sinking, taking its warmth away with it. “You’ll freeze.”

“Just leave me alone, Jeno. I don’t want to talk to you right now.”

“You could come stay at my place.”

“Fuck off.”

Jeno didn’t understand it. One moment, Renjun was forcing them to work together on the same project, and the next, he wouldn’t even permit a conversation. He thought that maybe Renjun hated for Jeno to see him like this -- to see him weak. He only liked Jeno when he could toy with him, when he had the confidence to do so.

It hadn’t always been like that. At one time, Jeno had been the only person Renjun would allow himself to be weak around.

\---

_Jeno’s father had pulled the air mattress from the closet and blown it up on the living room floor. This happened about once a week, on the nights when Renjun came to stay. Sometimes, they would have sleepovers with all three of them, Yerim included, but other times, Jeno could tell from just the look on Renjun’s face that he did not want her there -- though they were all friends, Renjun was the most comfortable with Jeno. It made sense. They had been the original duo, after all._

_Renjun would usually come over on nights he and his father were arguing, or on nights his father went to the bar; frequently, they overlapped. He had explained this to Jeno only once, as if it were something too embarrassing to recount on multiple occasions. It was obvious without him saying so, anyway. He would arrive on the doorstep with red eyes from crying and his stay-the-night bag hanging limply in his fist._

_Jeno wondered how often Renjun did not come over when his father was gone. He wondered how many nights Renjun spent alone, not making it known for fear of looking pitiable. But he never brought himself to ask._

_This time, Jeno’s father had made them semi-burnt pancakes for dinner (at the time, he was not much of a cook -- that had always been Jeno’s mother’s specialty), which they’d eaten at the counter while playing tic-tac-toe on a piece of scrap paper, sliding it back and forth between them. Jeno liked to let Renjun win every time. He liked the small, secret, proud smile that would break through on Renjun’s lips._

_After dinner, they’d watched a movie in the living room, and at nine, it was time for bed. Jeno took the couch, and Renjun took the air mattress, which had been pressed right up close to the couchside so they could talk to each other as they fell asleep. Jeno’s father switched off the living room lights, and told them good night._

_Jeno snuggled into his blanket and flipped onto his side, so he could see Renjun in the dark. The other boy was staring up at the ceiling, solemn-faced._

_“What are you thinking about?” Jeno whispered._

_“Nothing,” Renjun said._

_He was not a good liar -- the little wrinkle between his brows and the wobbling of his bottom lip said the opposite._

_“You can tell me.” Jeno reached down and poked Renjun’s cheek with his finger. “What’s the matter?”_

_Renjun started crying. He was always so easy to cry, no matter how badly he didn’t want to be. But that was one of the things Jeno admired about him -- he was so emotive, so tender-hearted, in a household that told him boys were not supposed to be either of those things. It made him brave._

_“I don’t want to go home tomorrow,” he said, voice with a teary crackle._

_Jeno wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to tell him that he could stay as long as he wanted. Surely, his father would not mind. But that was the same as telling Renjun to run away from his problems. He would have to go home eventually. Delaying it would not stop the inevitable._

_“Maybe you should tell your father how you feel,” Jeno finally offered. “Tell him you don’t want to argue with him anymore. He might understand.”_

_“I don’t like to talk to him about how I feel,” Renjun said._

_Jeno had felt something similar before, but he knew they were different situations. He knew that he could talk to his father about anything if he wanted to -- the only thing getting in his way was his embarrassment, an internal shame rather than an external one. Renjun had reason to be afraid of how his father would react. His father shamed him all the time._

_“I wish I could talk to my mom,” Renjun added, quietly. “I think she would understand.”_

_Jeno felt a pang in his heart like an arrow. Not just because he felt sorry for Renjun, but because it made him think of his own mother. He wished he could still talk to her, too._

_“I have an idea,” Jeno said. He leaned over the side of the couch, closer to Renjun. “What if we wrote letters?”_

_“Letters?”_

_“To our moms.”_

_“That doesn’t make sense,” Renjun objected._

_“I know it seems silly,” Jeno whispered, pink in the cheeks, “but we could write them letters, and tie them to balloons or something. Then we could let them go and they would float up until they hit heaven. Maybe they could get letters like that.”_

_Even at eleven years old, they both knew it was absurd. But they were desperate, too, and desperation allowed them to find hope in innocent, childish ways._

_“Okay,” Renjun said._

_Quietly, so as not to alert his father to their nighttime activities, Jeno retrieved paper and pencils from his bedroom, and they began to pen their letters on the coffee table. Renjun had turned away from Jeno, hand placed as a barrier as if guarding his test from a cheating classmate; he didn’t want Jeno to see what his letter said. But Jeno wouldn’t have looked, anyway. Whatever it was that Renjun wrote, he thought it was important that those words were left for Renjun’s mother, and Renjun’s mother only._

_When Jeno’s letter was finished, filled with anecdotes and memories and love, he sealed the envelope with a kiss._

_In the morning, they went to the supermarket and bought helium balloons. Carefully, they tied their letters to the ends of the balloon strings. Then, they counted to three, and let them go._

\---

Jeno stood by the swing, wishing he still knew the boy in front of him. He wondered if the crash had been inevitable. Maybe, if he’d done things a little differently, if he’d paid closer attention to how Renjun felt, things wouldn’t have fallen apart.

His heart thrummed, and it hurt.

“I’m only trying to be nice to you, Renjun,” he murmured. “I don’t want to fight with you. I know we can’t be how we used to. But I at least want us to be decent to each other.”

“I don’t want to be decent to you,” Renjun said plainly. “And I don’t want your pity, either.”

“I don’t pity you.”

“Your sympathy, then. I don’t want your sympathy.” His fists tightened on the chains of the swing. His fingers were red from the cold, but his knuckles were white.

“Then what do you want?” Jeno asked.

“To make you miserable.”

Jeno was open-mouthed, emptied of words. The look in Renjun’s eyes -- dark, deep, _angry_ \-- said that he’d meant it. It wasn’t a performance, but the bitter truth.

At that moment, a little blue butterfly drifted near them. It fluttered prettily in between them, light as air, then settled itself at the breast of Renjun’s coat, perhaps where a locket would lay, if he wore one. They both looked at it, silent, surprised. Then Renjun clamped a hand over it, trapping it in his fist.

Slowly, he held his hand out, as if offering it to Jeno as a gift. “Should I let it go?” he asked.

Jeno could picture the butterfly, flapping its wings helplessly, pressing itself against Renjun’s bent fingers. So pitiful, so pathetic.

He remembered his locket, and could not forget it.

“No,” he said. “You should keep it.”

He walked away, back to his bike, leaving Renjun and his butterfly alone in the park at night.

\---

_Jeno saw Renjun’s bugs the first time he visited his apartment, at the edge of eleven years old. They were displayed on the wall behind his desk, in wooden frames with glass overlaying sheets of styrofoam. At the time, Renjun had only three full frames worth of insects, a collection that would multiply over the years until it consumed about half his bedroom. Jeno wondered how Renjun had even managed to find so many different kinds; he’d never realized quite how many species there were in the area, but Renjun told him it was about searching in the right places, like under rocks and deep in the dirt. He had a huge book about it, kept in his desk drawer, that he took out now. When he set it down, it made a heavy bang._

_“See? It has distribution maps,” Renjun explained, finger ghosting down the page. “It tells you where to find them, and what families they’re in, and their scientific names.”_

_“Huh.” Jeno didn’t know much about bugs, aside from the minimal amount they’d been taught in school, like how insects had six legs and arachnids eight. At first, he’d thought Renjun’s fascination was just with the process of capturing them, the thrill that came with snapping a bug shut in his fist, the sense of ownership over a living thing. He had not known that it was more than that. It was about collecting and preserving and admiring, like the bugs were works of art._

_Renjun perched in his desk chair, sitting on his folded legs, pushing his book to the side. He took a jar from his window sill and twisted off its lid, filling the room with the acrid scent of alcohol. Carefully, he removed the brittle corpse of a monarch butterfly with his silver tweezers and placed it on top of a fresh sheet of styrofoam. It tilted, lopsided, one wing sticking up in the air._

_Jeno felt as though he was attending a funeral. He remembered his own mother’s, as he’d sat in the front row of the pews, his father’s arm around his shoulders. He could not remember any of the words the pastor had spoken, but for some reason, he could remember in great detail the way his legs had been just long enough to touch the stone floor, the toes of his sneakers faintly trailing a crack, which he focused intently on so as to distract himself from his tears. It had been no use. He’d cried the entire service, and then for a long time after they’d returned home._

_“Do you want to do it?” Renjun asked. It took Jeno a moment to register what he was asking. He caught the glint of the pin held between Renjun’s fingers, and winced._

_“No,” he said. He could imagine the cool sting of the pin as it touched flesh, and it made him feel terribly sorry for the butterfly, though it was already dead. “I feel kind of weird about it. You can do it.”_

_Renjun shrugged, and did it himself. His face seemed to transform, gaze cool and focused, hands gentle and precise. It was a look mature beyond his years, as though he’d aged decades before Jeno’s eyes. And, like a funeral, it was peaceful and transfixing._

_“Renjun,” Jeno said. “Why do you like doing that?”_

_Renjun did not answer until he’d finished and determined his work of passable quality. He spoke as he retrieved a glass frame from within his desk drawer, laying it over the styrofoam, giving the butterfly a crystalline coffin. “Did you know that most bugs don’t live very long? Most live less than a year. Some only live a few hours.” He ran his finger along the glass, tracing one of the butterfly’s wings. Jeno instead watched his face -- dark lashes over downturned eyes, the shadow of a smile. “But like this, you can make them last forever.”_

_“Forever,” Jeno echoed. He was so young, that it was a word he did not consider much. Why did he need forever, when it seemed he still had all the time in the world? But life had let him know that that was a naive way to think. People died. Happiness was not permanent._

_“Don’t you think beautiful things ought to last forever?” Renjun asked him._

_The light from the window set his eyes aglow, turning them from black to a bottomless bluish-gray. They looked, Jeno thought, how stars might look if filtered through turning waves as you stood on the ocean floor, peering upwards, trying to count the constellations as they swirled and shimmered over your head._

_Jeno swallowed, then said, “Yes. I do.”_

_\---_

Jeno knelt among the fallen leaves, the ones left over from last autumn, which had re-emerged after the recent thaw. He was glad it was spring and that the snow was gone, otherwise it would have made the task all the more arduous as he dug through the debris, searching.

He’d been in the woods for an hour. It was starting to seem hopeless, as Jeno had parted every bush, kicked up every leaf, and even began turning over rocks as if the locket might have somehow slipped beneath them. It was nowhere to be seen.

The thought of living without it now seemed impossible, and his breathing began to catch and quicken, the seeding of a sudden panic. He was stupid to have thrown it away. A complete fool. He pressed the back of his hand to his mouth, pushing back a sob as it tried to crawl up his throat.

He wouldn’t give up yet. He bent down beside an ant-eaten log, where a mud puddle had pooled from last night’s rain. He reached into it, grimacing at the slimy feeling between his fingers. He felt twigs and slick grass, but not the familiar curve of the locket’s pendant.

His elbow touched the low-hanging branch of a bramble, and he recoiled at the prick of a thorn. He pulled his hands from the mud, wiping them clean on the knees of his jeans, not caring about it staining. Standing and peering down over the bramble, he noticed it, a golden glinting somewhere among the criss-crossing tendrils of the thicket.

Jeno rolled up his sleeves, and slipped his hand into a small hole in the bramble. A thorn scratched against his forearm, sharp enough that it drew a thin line of blood. He flinched, and his knuckles fell into even more thorns, cutting them open. He took in a hiss of a breath, but did not stop. Not until his fist closed around the loop of the locket’s chain, securing it in his grasp, and he could slip it free from the thicket.

He fell back onto the grass, so relieved he thought he might cry. He opened the latch, making sure the photo inside was still intact; then, he shut it, and pressed the pendant to his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for my lack of timeliness!! finishing my school year had set me behind, but i'm back on the horse now!! the next few chapters should come out much faster!
> 
> thank you for reading!
> 
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	5. Renjun

Renjun retraced his steps through the hall, peering up and down along the tile floor. On his way to the front exit after track practice, he’d realized his backpack felt strangely light on his shoulders, then unzipped it to check. He’d been right -- his sketchbook was not where it usually sat, tucked between his homework folder and his pencil bag. He’d sworn and reversed, unwilling to leave with the knowledge that it was lying somewhere within the high school, where anyone could come upon it.

He was turning back into the locker room to search when he nearly walked right into Jaemin, who’d been on his way out.

“Oh,” Jaemin said. “Hey.”

Renjun muttered an uninterested greeting, and tried to push through.

“Renjun --” Jaemin blocked his way, and held up his hand. In it, he gripped Renjun’s small, string-bound sketchbook. “I was actually looking for you. This is yours, right?”

“What?” Renjun should have been relieved, but instead felt an uncomfortable itch in the pit of his stomach. “Where’d you find that?”

“It was lying on the locker room floor. You must have dropped it when you grabbed your stuff.”

Renjun always changed and left as quickly as he could after track. He didn’t like it when his team mates tried to rope him into their conversations -- he was an outsider there, and he knew it. He recalled the way he’d carelessly, hurriedly tugged his bag from his locker after, its shoulder strap catching on the lock, and realized the sketchbook had to have fallen out then, abandoned beside a changing bench.

Renjun said a hasty “thank you,” snatched his sketchbook back, and hugged it tight to his chest as he took a few steps away from Jaemin. He froze there, pressing his fingers against the cool leather binding.

“Did you see it?” he asked.

Jaemin raised a brow. “See what?”

Renjun let out a relieved breath, a moment too soon.

“Oh. You mean all the drawings of him?”

Renjun’s face sunk into a glare, forcing out the anger to try and hide his rattled heart.

“Sorry,” Jaemin said. “I wasn’t trying to snoop -- I only looked to see whose book it was.” Renjun expected a smirk, but Jaemin only looked at him with a tentative, trying smile. “They’re really good drawings. I think he would like them.”

Renjun didn’t return the smile. “If you tell him, I’ll kill you.” He hoped Jaemin could tell from the low, knife-sharp tone of his voice that he was not kidding.

“I wasn’t going to. It’s not my place to.”

“Good. Don’t touch my stuff again.”

Renjun did not care that he was being ungrateful. He hugged the sketchbook harder, fingernails digging into its cover and making marks. Then, he whisked away, before Jaemin could see the way his cheeks had begun to redden.

\---

_For Renjun’s twelfth birthday, Jeno bought him a box of colored pencils. Not just any colored pencils you’d buy at the supermarket, but expensive ones, with pretty dark wood and soft leads and seventy-two different colors. When Renjun opened them, he had been too shocked to speak._

_“Do you like them?” Jeno asked, seeming nervous at Renjun’s reaction._

_“Yeah. I do.”_

_Jeno’s father, who was baking Renjun’s birthday cake, called in from the kitchen, “Jeno dragged me into an art supply store downtown, because he saw those in the window and thought of you.” He appeared in the doorway then, wiping batter from his hands with a rag. “They’re supposed to be really good. I don’t know a whole lot about art, but the person at the store said you can blend them kind of like pastels.”_

_“Thank you,” Renjun said, bowing his head. He knew they’d cost a pretty penny, and he knew that both Jeno and his father knew that Renjun could not offer much in return -- for Jeno’s birthday next month, he probably would not be able to buy him a present, because he did not get an allowance and his father did not make much money. But they’d gotten him a wonderful gift anyway. He felt both lucky and unworthy._

_To pay Jeno back, he began to draw._

_“Can I see?” Jeno asked, leaning an elbow on the coffee table beside him._

_“Not until I’m done,” Renjun responded. He shifted the paper away and hunched over it. He liked the pencils -- he’d never been able to afford nice art supplies before, but the difference was obvious in the smoothness of the lines they produced. He was glad. He wanted this drawing to be good._

_“Should I leave you alone?”_

_“Just for a few minutes.”_

_Jeno left the living room for his bedroom, door open, sitting at his desk to begin his homework. Renjun kept glancing up at him, hoping Jeno didn’t notice the way he was being studied. Renjun had never drawn him before, at least not seriously. He thought he should be able to do it without looking at him, with how much time they spent together. But Renjun found that, as he drew Jeno, he kept noticing new things about him. He’d known very well the mole on Jeno’s cheek, but not the tiny one on the tip of his nose. And he’d never really thought of what Jeno’s ears looked like, but he discovered they were small, the curve at the top half-flattened, like delicate seashells._

_When Renjun was finished, he walked to Jeno’s bedroom and, sheepishly, he held the drawing out to him. “Here,” he said._

_Jeno dropped his pen and took it. His eyes went round. “You drew me?” he asked, softly, in a disbelieving exhale._

_“I know it isn’t very good --”_

_“It’s great.” Jeno traced the lines with his finger, careful not to smudge it. So careful, his fingers were trembling. “I wish I could draw like you can, Renjun.”_

_Renjun knew Jeno did not mean it. He was only trying to make Renjun feel good about himself. Jeno already had baseball, and he was better at it than every other kid on the team. Renjun could not believe Jeno might be jealous of him over anything._

_Jeno knelt in his chair, leaning over his desk to pin the drawing to his tackboard. And despite his misgivings, for once, Renjun felt special._

\---

Renjun sometimes wondered about that drawing. He decided that Jeno had thrown it out, erasing all evidence of Renjun’s existence from his house. The same as he’d done when he’d cut Renjun out of the photograph.

Now, he tucked his sketchbook into his desk drawer. He wouldn’t bring it to school again. He refused to risk a repeat of that afternoon’s incident. It was bad enough that Jaemin knew -- perhaps, next time, it would be Jeno. And if that happened, Renjun would be so ashamed that he could never show his face to anyone again.

He sat down, and plucked a jar from his window sill. He held it up in the bright sunlight, which cast through it, throwing split-diamond shadows onto his desktop, just like the gridded design on the jar’s sides. Floating in the alcohol was the little blue butterfly.

Last night, Renjun had not let it go, just as Jeno had told him. He’d dug in his backpack, which he’d brought to the park with him, and trapped in that jar. He often had one with him, just in case he happened upon an insect he didn’t already have. Then he’d sat on the swing late into the night, rocking it back and forth, the jar in his lap as he’d watched the butterfly’s limp body roll about as if caught on a current.

He’d stayed out until three AM. When he’d come back, his father had been sleeping, finally -- all his anger seemed to have worn him out. And the next morning, Renjun had been sure to wake before him, slipping out the door before they’d had another chance to run into each other.

Renjun could not even remember why they’d started fighting in the first place. These days, they didn’t need a reason. His father was always disappointed in him. And Renjun was always itching for an outlet, an opportunity to shout and swear. It was almost a game, but no matter how it ended, Renjun always felt he lost.

It was part of the reason he hadn’t ever stopped with his collection. As a child, he’d simply been interested in it, but now, as a near-adult, it was comforting and calming. He liked doing things with his hands, something that required focus and attention to detail and time. As he arranged the butterfly on the styrofoam, carefully straightening its wings, he felt the tension evaporating. Drawing did the same thing -- it put him at ease.

He heard the front door open and shut, and was at ease no longer.

His father stood in his doorway, leaning against the frame, his large body filling it. He’d just gotten off from work, and he looked older than he was, Renjun thought: too many gray hairs, too many wrinkles at the corners of his eyes, the look in his eyes too dim.

“Renjun,” he said. “What time did you come home last night?”

Renjun turned back around, refusing to look at him. “I dunno.”

“You’ve got to stop doing that. It isn’t safe. And it was freezing last night.”

He always did that. He always acted so sorry the next day, so worried. Renjun couldn’t tell which was more real -- the bitter, ranting version of his father, or the sorry one.

“I’m fine,” Renjun murmured. “Nothing bad happened to me, so it doesn’t matter.”

His father didn’t leave. He lingered, awkward, like by standing in that doorway, he was forcing himself smaller, folding himself up. “Hey. Let’s order takeout for dinner tonight. Whatever you want.”

Renjun pressed his hand to his face, squeezing his eyes shut. He was exhausted by the constant cycle, the gifts and the apologies to make up for what would simply repeat itself the next night.

His other hand slipped, and tore the butterfly’s wing with his tweezers. A long tear, from the blackened corner to the cerulean center. He looked down at it with nothing more than a hollow disappointment ringing in his gut.

“Alright,” he conceded. A truce, amongst a long string of defeats.

\---

In class the next day, he could not sit still. His toe kept tapping, without him even noticing, and his fingers twitching. He had not brought his sketchbook, of course, and it was hard for him to focus when he couldn’t draw at the same time. He’d gotten very used to drawing the back of Jeno’s head; he watched it now, the shimmer of Jeno’s dark hair, the line of his neck. The golden clasp stared back at him.

He was going to find out what was inside, once and for all. All he was waiting for was the end-of-the-day bell.

But it was only eight o’clock, and there were nine periods left to go. Renjun put a hand on his knee to stop his toe from tapping.

The nervous energy followed him everywhere. He wasn’t sure why the thought of knowing the truth made him so nervous. He wasn’t sure why he was so invested in the truth in the first place. What did it matter who was inside the locket, when he and Jeno had not been friends in five years? Why did it matter, when he hated Jeno so much he could hardly stand it?

 _That’s exactly it_ , Renjun thought, while he sat in the cafeteria at lunch, poking at his food but not eating it. It was because he hated Jeno that he had to know. He wanted to expose every one of Jeno’s secrets, expose them like bone beneath flesh, pick away at them until they were a torturous open wound. He wanted to watch Jeno squirm.

“What are you looking at?” his friend Wonjae asked, poking him with the handle end of his fork.

Renjun had been peering over heads, across the room, to where Jeno sat. He could always find him in a crowd. Jeno’s silhouette was stamped on his brain.

“Nothing,” Renjun responded. “What were you saying?”

“I was talking about this girl,” Wonjae said. “You know. The one I’ve been hanging out with lately.”

“Who definitely doesn’t exist,” said another boy with a snicker.

“She does,” Wonjae insisted. “She goes to an all-girls school. That’s why you’ve never seen her. Anyway, she came over last night.”

A low whistle from the other side of the table. “Damn. Is she easy?”

Wonjae grinned with his tongue between his teeth. “I dunno. I think she’s a virgin.”

A murmur of a laugh passed around the circle, as if Wonjae had achieved some great feat.

“How far’d you get? First base?”

Wonjae’s chest puffed with pride. “Second.”

Another round of laughter. Renjun did not join in. Sometimes, he played along when they spoke like that, just so he didn’t seem like an outsider. In truth, he hadn’t dated a girl in a few years, and back then, they’d been too young and innocent to even think of anything beyond kissing.

His father liked to remind him of this, every so often.

“When are you gonna get a girlfriend?” he would ask chidingly. “When I was your age, I had a girl on each arm.”

Renjun could not ignore the way those words got under his skin. And it was made worse by the constant talk, the constant recounting of escapades by his friends, for whom girls were the forefront thing on their mind. They talked about girls like collectibles. They talked about them like prize deer from a hunt, mounted then put on display.

Renjun wondered how many girls Jeno had been with -- something he wondered often, with a jealous itch. It must have been easy for him, being the baseball team’s ace. At his house, he’d told Renjun that he was not seeing anyone right then. But Renjun was sure there was a line of girls out the door, waiting their turn, and Jeno could have his pick of any of them.

Perhaps one of them was in his locket.

Renjun remembered only half the day was left. Only a few hours before he would know for sure.

“Are you even listening?” Wonjae whined. This time, he poked Renjun with the pronged end. “I’m getting to the juicy part.”

“I’m listening,” he lied.

\---

Renjun slipped into the locker room, unnoticed.

First, he’d passed by the baseball diamond from a distance, weaving between a few tall oak trees that lined the edge of the school’s grounds. The baseball team had started practice about five minutes prior, and all of them had seemed to be gathered out there, starting their warmups. He was able to pick Jeno’s form among them, solidly built, unmistakeable.

Meanwhile, in the far distance, he’d seen the track team on the turf. He’d skipped practice that day, because he’d had no choice -- track and baseball met at the same time on Thursdays. He would get scolded by his coach, but it would be worth it, if he could find what he was looking for.

Presently, he trailed between the lockers, dragging his fingers along their doors, catching in the tiny gridded holes of their grates. The baseball team had a different locker room than the track team, one closer to the field -- it was used by them in the spring, then the soccer team in the fall. Renjun had never been inside it before. He took his time, knowing he had an hour before the players would return to change, but still alert in case someone showed up by surprise.

He held the slip he’d torn from Jeno’s planner in his hand. Two combinations, one for his class locker, one for baseball. It had his locker number, too -- one twenty-two -- and he turned the corner into the next aisle, searching. He found it in the back corner, and knelt on the bench in front of it, lifting the lock and beginning to twist the dial.

It took two tries to get it right. Renjun smiled at the _click_ as it slid open, and hooked the loose lock on the inside of the locker door. Inside, Jeno’s locket hung from one of the hooks. Below it was his backpack, and his clothes, folded on top of it. Since he had time, Renjun allowed a small detour. He picked Jeno’s jacket from the pile. It smelled like him, Renjun thought, like his body wash and his house, and it was almost enough to make Renjun nostalgic. He pulled the jacket on, and walked over to the mirrors by the sinks, checking how he looked in Jeno’s clothes. The shoulders were too broad on him, and the sleeves too long. Still, he liked the feel of it. He liked the feel of pretending to be Jeno, just for a moment.

He walked back towards the locker, imitating Jeno’s confident and easy way of walking, and dropped the jacket off his shoulders and onto the floor. It occurred to him that Jeno undressed in that very spot, and suddenly, the nerves he perhaps should have felt the whole time came back to him. His face warmed, imagining Jeno’s body naked under the cool locker room lights, wondering what it might be like to draw it. His breath quickened, and he hated himself for it.

He had to get out of there. He shoved the jacket back inside, and reached for the pendant of the locket. It was precisely what he had come there for, but why were his fingers trembling, making it so difficult to flick open the clasp? Why was his heart in his throat, as if it were a matter of life or death?

He tried to swallow it back, and pressed his thumb on the pendant’s side. The cover popped open, and at first, the glare of the light hit the glass inside and made the photo indiscernible. Renjun tilted it, not realizing the way he was biting his lip with intense focus, almost hard enough to bleed.

He was motionless. Then, he fell back from the locker, pressing his hand over his mouth.

He did not know what to do. So, he ran.

\---

_The year that Renjun and Jeno turned thirteen, things began to change. At first, it was physical things -- Renjun noticed that Jeno had gotten taller, his face had begun to lose its roundness, and his voice had begun to lower. He was so preoccupied by those changes in Jeno that he hardly noticed them in himself, until the point that they became impossible to ignore. Along with the changes in his body came new feelings, which he did not know what to do with; his solution was to lock them in a box and pretend he did not feel them._

_However, Yerim, being one year older, grew up the fastest. One time they were in the woods, and Yerim sat kneeling by her log, perching her folded arms atop it and studying her glass bottles. She ran a finger down one’s side, drawing a line in the dust it had collected. “You know,” she said, “I heard that Taesung and Jihyun started dating.”_

_“Really?” Jeno asked. He was lying across the flat stone, holding a stick of chalk he’d brought and drawing something. “Good for them.”_

_“I’m jealous,” Yerim went on. “I think I’d like to have a boyfriend.” She looked at Jeno, as if Renjun was not even there, though he sat just a few feet away, watching the conversation with a mysterious dread filling his stomach like smoke._

_Jeno didn’t say anything, just kept drawing. Renjun peered over his shoulder and saw it was the three of them, stick figures, lined up in a row. He drew Yerim with her braids, Renjun with his jar of bugs, and himself with his baseball mitt._

_Yerim seemed to have gathered a bit more courage. Boldly, she asked, “Wouldn’t you like to date someone, Jeno?”_

_He laughed. “I dunno. I think we’re too young to be dating anyone. My dad says I can’t date until I’m at least sixteen, anyway.”_

_Yerim jutted her bottom lip, and didn’t say anything else._

_It was obvious, and it was painful. Renjun began to notice every little thing. Yerim touching Jeno on the arm when she had no reason to. Yerim giggling when he said something that wasn’t even funny. Yerim forgetting that Renjun was in the room when it was the three of them, when it had always been the three of them, but now she only saw Jeno._

_Renjun felt the same way he had at the baseball game. Frustrated, sick to his stomach._

_And Jeno had become more distant from him, too. He often saw a faraway look in his eyes, something introspective and distracted. Whatever had tethered them all together in the first place seemed to be wearing thin. Renjun refused to let it break. He decided he needed to talk to Jeno, and soon._

_School was the best time to have Jeno to himself -- Yerim was in the grade above them, but he and Jeno were in the same class. He approached him one day during their break, leaning against the side of Jeno’s desk._

_“Hey,” he said. “I have a question.”_

_Jeno had been writing something on a piece of paper. Quickly, he folded it shut to hide it, as if it were a secret. Perhaps, a love letter._

_Renjun nearly lost his nerve at the sight of it. But he still forced himself to ask, “What do you think about Yerim lately?”_

_Jeno shot him a confused look. “What do you mean? That’s a weird question.”_

_Renjun still watched his hands, closed over the paper, wishing he could see through them, to whatever he’d written inside._

_“I don’t know,” Renjun said, as nonchalantly as he could. “Do you ever get the feeling she might like you?”_

_Jeno’s mouth opened wordlessly in surprise._

_“You know,” Renjun pressed. “_ Like _-like you.”_

 _The silence lasted too long for comfort. Jeno finally forced a smile and said, “I guess I never thought about it.” He nudged Renjun’s hand. “Why, what do_ you _think about it?”_

_Quickly, too quickly, in a brisk cover-up of the truth, Renjun answered, “It doesn’t matter to me. Maybe you should go out with her. It wouldn’t make any difference to me.”_

_Jeno looked away from him. “Oh. You really think so?”_

_Renjun didn’t respond._

_“Maybe I will, then,” Jeno murmured. He folded his paper and placed it in his bag._

_The tension was no longer one-sided. Renjun could feel it in the air like electricity as they walked home from school. He dragged several feet behind, watching the ants crawl over the concrete, trying not to step on them._

_Ahead, Yerim and Jeno walked close together. Jeno said something, and Yerim’s body shook with laughter as she clung at his arm. Jeno flinched away from the touch, as if still shocked by the thought that it might have a subtext, that maybe they weren’t quite kids anymore, that maybe, they couldn’t play the way they used to, because it had taken on a new meaning._

_The next time she touched him, leaning her head on his shoulder, he didn’t move away._

_It was inevitable, Renjun thought. Wasn’t that how it went in the movies? The boy and the girl always ended up together. There were only two, not three. Of course, Yerim loved Jeno, and Jeno loved Yerim, and nobody loved Renjun._

_He stepped on an ant, and ground its body into the sidewalk with his heel._

_They got to Jeno’s house first. He walked up his front steps and waved goodbye to them from the door._

_As Renjun and Yerim continued walking, Renjun kept looking back, watching Jeno’s silhouette. He was angry. Jeno was already so happy. He had a father who loved him, and a girl who loved him, too. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair that he had everything Renjun could not. It wasn’t fair that he could be perfect, while Renjun had to be nothing._

_He noticed that Yerim was watching Jeno, too, glossy-eyed and red-cheeked. Renjun knew her heart must have been beating so fast she could not control it. Like a butterfly fluttering against her ribs._

_He had a terrible, awful idea. One that should have been drowned right there and then. But Renjun was young and jealous, a dangerous combination. If the tether was going to break, Renjun would not wait. He would sever it himself, if only out of spite._

_“Yerim,” he said._

_She stopped walking and looked at him, for what felt like the first time in days. “What?”_

_“Do you want to know a secret?”_

_Her gaze drifted back up, above Renjun’s head, towards Jeno’s house. The curiosity, the thought that it might be Jeno’s secret, won out. She gave a small nod._

_Renjun came close to her, cupping his hand around his mouth and speaking against her ear._

_“Jeno is in love with someone. But it isn’t you.”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	6. Renjun

_“Jeno is in love with someone. But it isn’t you.”_

_Renjun did not know at the time that he was telling the truth._

_Rather, he thought it a very clever lie, one that had shaken Yerim so badly that she’d hurried home after, seeming on the verge of tears. Renjun did not feel sorry for it. In fact, he thought of it as doing her a favor._

_Jeno was a boy of extraordinary talents. Yerim, however, was decidedly ordinary. A love like that would never last. It was not meant to be. And though it was easy to get caught up in someone who shined ten times brighter than you, it would eventually swallow you whole and spit you out once you had nothing left to give. You would not be enough. You would be too ordinary to love. Yerim, Renjun thought, was an ordinary girl who deserved an ordinary boy._

_Perhaps, an ordinary boy like himself._

_The next morning at school, before classes started, Renjun detoured for the eighth grade hallway. Yerim stood at her locker, and he was almost surprised to see her there -- he thought she might have skipped, considering how heartbroken she’d seemed last night after he’d made his little white lie._

_“Hey,” he said._

_She glanced at him warily. Her eyes were dark-circled as if she’d been up late crying, and her twin braids frazzled. “What do you want?” she muttered._

_“What? Are you mad at me?”_

_She pouted in response._

_“I didn’t do anything. I was only passing the news along.”_

_“How do you even know that for sure?” she asked, dropping one of her textbooks to the bottom of her locker with a heavy bang. “How do you know Jeno’s in love with someone?”_

_“Because he told me so.” Now that he’d done it once, the fibs came easy. And he liked it, too, having the power that came with telling them. “He wouldn’t talk to you about that kind of thing, ‘cause you’re a girl. But he told me about it just the other day.”_

_“I don’t want to talk about it anymore, Renjun. I just want to be left alone today. Okay?”_

_“Did you really believe he liked you?” Renjun needled._

_“What? Was it such a far-fetched idea?” she snapped back. “It isn’t crazy to think he might have liked me. He --”_

_“What would Jeno want with a girl with scraped knees and dirt under her nails and a body like a boy’s?”_

_Yerim inhaled sharply, in shock at Renjun’s audacity. Then, she raised a hand and slapped him hard across the face._

_Around them, the other students startled at the sound, trying to find its source. Yerim quickly scanned the hall to make sure there were no teachers who might have caught it. Meanwhile, Renjun fingered his stinging cheek, finding he wasn’t much bothered, though it had hurt._

_Only a few months ago, their arguments had been harmless. They’d been little games -- who could make who break first, who could press the other’s buttons fastest -- and though, to any outsider, they might have seemed hateful, it was more like an affectionate ribbing._

_To Renjun, it was still a game. To Yerim, it was deadly serious._

_Renjun pushed it further, just to see if he could._

_“I think you should give up on Jeno,” he told her, “and date me instead.”_

_She blew it off as if he were joking. “You’re insane.”_

_“I’m not. I mean it.”_

_She stopped, staring into his eyes, trying to figure him out. “You do?”_

_“Yeah. Actually, I’ve liked you for ages.” He leaned in closer to her, the same way he had when he’d told her the secret the night before. It occurred to him suddenly that he was taller than her now; for the longest time, it had been the other way around. “Besides. I think it would be a nice way of getting under Jeno’s skin. The two of us together, and him all alone.”_

_“Getting under his skin?” She said the words slowly, tasting their temptation. “Why would you want that, Renjun? I thought Jeno was your best friend.”_

_“He isn’t. I don’t like him anymore.” Then, again, firmly, as if trying to prove it to himself, “I don’t like him.” He tapped his fingers on the edge of her open locker door. “So what do you say?”_

_Yerim bit her lip, and Renjun knew already she would say yes. Yerim wanted a boyfriend, more than anything. Yerim wanted to be loved. She had wanted it to be Jeno. But if it couldn’t be him, she would take anyone, because it was better than being alone._

_“Okay,” she whispered, barely audible above the crash as she slammed her locker shut. “I’ll see you at lunch.”_

\---

When Renjun exited the baseball team’s locker room, he did not look towards the field. He walked straight ahead, eyes on his feet, willing them to move as quickly as possible as he veered around the end of the school building, towards the sidewalk.

_My photo is inside Jeno’s locket._

It was the very image of him that had been cut from the photograph on Jeno’s tackboard. The one from Jeno’s thirteenth birthday party. He had not been able to remember before quite what his expression had looked like in it. As it turned out, he was not smiling for the camera, not even trying. He was frowning, as if he’d just blown a miserable breath between his teeth, his eyes turned to his right -- whether he was glaring at Jeno or Yerim, he could not tell without the rest of the photo as context.

If Renjun was not so shaken at the revelation, he might have found it funny, that the picture Jeno had chosen was such a terrible, clearly unhappy one. Maybe it was the only photo he had of Renjun; Renjun had always been camera shy.

_Jeno is in love with me._

He needed no other evidence. He might have liked to believe otherwise, but now that he knew, it seemed so crystal clear, and he wanted to hit himself for being so oblivious for so long.

He really had not known. He really, truly had not had even the slightest inkling.

Once he was out of sight of the school grounds, he began to run. He ran, until he realized he did not want to go home, and detoured towards the park. A couple of kids played on the jungle gym. Renjun ignored them and dropped onto a swing, the chains jangling over his head. He must have looked out of place, an eighteen-year-old sitting alone on the swingset with his face buried in his jacket sleeve, but he didn’t care.

His heart felt like it was about to explode, pulse racing, seeming to get faster every second like a bomb ticking down. He thought back to the moment in Jeno’s kitchen, as he’d dropped the glasses onto the floor and watched as Jeno had been forced to pick up after him. Forced by the residual affection he carried, by the cross he beared in the locket over his heart.

Renjun twisted his fingers into the links of the chains. Had everything he’d done been pointless? Thinking for so long that Yerim had been the one Jeno loved -- Renjun felt like a complete fool. Even accidentally, Jeno always managed to pull the rug out from under his feet and turn his world upside down. He could wreck Renjun without even lifting a finger. He could wreck him just by loving him quietly. He had more power over Renjun than Renjun had over him. And that made Renjun deeply, dangerously angry.

Just once, he wanted to win.

_\---_

Renjun entered through his front door just before dinner time. His dad was home, and he was leaning against the kitchen counter and tapping at his phone as if he had been waiting for something. When he heard the door open, he shoved his phone into his pocket and crossed his arms.

“Where have you been?” he asked.

Renjun was half in, half out, and considered reversing and running away while he still had the chance. His deliberation took too long, and his father continued on without waiting for an answer.

“I got a call from your track coach. He said you weren’t at practice today, even though you were marked present on the classroom attendance.”

“Oh.” Renjun felt a chill as he leaned back against the door to close it. He should have known this was coming. He did not regret skipping practice to open Jeno’s locker. But he did regret not coming up with a cover-up in advance. “I didn’t feel well, so…”

“Then why didn’t you come right home? School ended hours ago, Renjun.”

Renjun toed the welcome mat with his sneaker.

“Come here,” his father said.

Renjun forced himself to walk into the kitchen, to stand across from his father. He could not force himself to look at him; he looked at the tile floor instead.

His father said, “Christ, if you just want to quit, you might as well admit it. It’s not like it would be any big surprise. You’ve done it enough times already.”

“I don’t want to quit,” Renjun said. “I just… didn’t feel like going today. I’ll go next week. I’ll talk to the coach.”

His father ran a hand over his face, making it obvious that he found Renjun to be a nuisance. “I wish that one of these days you’d pick up even a scrap of responsibility. You graduate at the end of the year. What the hell are you going to do after that? Quit every job you land once you get sick of it?”

“That’s not the same thing,” Renjuns snapped. He could feel himself getting worked up. It always happened the same way -- his father would needle him to make him break, waiting for the right word to hit Rejun’s sore spot. And like a puncture in a pipe, Renjun would overflow, with no regard for what he said or did, unsatisfied until he was left completely empty. “You always spin it like that -- you always try and make me feel bad.”

“No, I don’t. I’m just worried about you.”

“You’re not.”

“I am. You’re young, and you’re reckless, and you think that whatever you do won’t have an effect on everyone else you know, but it will.” His father slapped a palm down on the counter. “I just want to be fucking proud of you, but you make it so goddamn hard, Renjun. You don’t have a backbone. You don’t even have a single fucking skill to put on a college application or a job resume.”

Renjun’s hands started trembling. His face was hot. He was on the verge of tears. This was another thing that always happened. He always cried when he least wanted to.

“You don’t have to be so mean to me,” he said, but the words were thin and pathetic-sounding. He was embarrassed that he had even said them.

That made his father angrier than anything. Not a shout or a curse, but a sign of weakness in his house. “Don’t be a fucking baby. Don’t start with the crying again.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Renjun said. He swallowed back a sob, but it forced its way up in an unbecoming hiccup.

“You know, I think something was knocked loose in your head in that crash. It’s the only fucking explanation.”

Renjun’s jaw dropped, and a tear fell over and hit the floor. The crash that had killed his mother, his father had meant, where they’d been struck on the passenger’s side and she had died on impact. He and his father had only suffered minor injuries from the shattered windshield and being jerked around by the force. None of this Renjun could remember himself -- he had been only a baby, strapped in his carseat. He wondered how the same man who had filled him in on this so carefully, so slowly as if it had been painful to retell, could fling it back at him now as an insult.

Renjun swept his arm over the counter closest to him, knocking to the floor his father’s car keys and their wooden spoons and the glass sugar jar. The jar did not break, so Renjun picked it up and threw it. It hit the cabinet to the left of his father’s head, and shattered into pieces that fell like hail onto the floor.

“I hate you,” he said, and ran back out into the warm evening air, ignoring his father’s apologetic plea. He’d heard it one too many times.

\---

Renjun lay across the large, flat rock at the top of the hill. He still came there sometimes, when he didn’t want to be at home, because he knew it would always be empty and quiet. No other children had taken up their mantle and claimed the spot for themselves. It would always belong to him and Jeno and Yerim.

The sky wasn’t sunset orange, but dark gray with oncoming rain. Beyond the clouds, Renjun thought the stars might have already risen, only to be buried and forgotten. A few feet away from the rock, Renjun caught the luminous edge of a cobalt blue bottle laying half-covered by leaves and dirt. He remembered that Yerim had used to have one like it balanced on her log, and filled it with a little ivy plant, which had grown long over the bottle’s lip. Perhaps it was the very same bottle, abandoned, blown about by the wind.

It took a long time for Renjun’s tears to dry. He mopped them with his sleeve, awaiting the rain to replace them, staring up into the murky sky. He would stay there all night, because he knew it would make his father worry. He wanted to worry him sick.

He thought again about the locket. Practice was long over, and it was back around Jeno’s neck. Renjun pictured him cradling the pendant in his hands, staring at the photograph, wishing it were something real.

If it were real, maybe the two of them would be lying side by side on that rock the same way they had as children, only Yerim would not be lying between them. Maybe Jeno’s hand would be on top of his, and maybe he would turn on his side and touch Renjun’s face. Then he might kiss him. As he imagined it, Renjun placed his index and middle fingers against his lips and shut his eyes. Maybe Jeno would tug at the collar of his shirt so he could trail the kisses lower, against his neck and chest. He might unbutton it, and press his mouth against Renjun’s bare stomach. Renjun’s fingers followed, down his throat, down his abdomen, the emulation of a touch. He let out a shuddering breath.

A raindrop hit his cheek. His eyes flew open.

Maybe, maybe, this was what Jeno imagined every single night.

It occurred to Renjun that he had already won.

\---

_In junior high, news traveled fast, because children had little else to concern themselves with aside from who had a crush on who and who was caught kissing behind the sports equipment shed. By midday, everyone seemed to know that Yerim and Renjun were a couple. Renjun knew that Yerim must have been so excited at the mere thought of having a boyfriend that she had gone and told all her friends, and her friends had told theirs, and now it had saturated the entirety of the seventh and eighth grades._

_And, very casually, Renjun had mentioned it to a couple of people, too -- in the hopes that it might reach Jeno’s ear by the end of the day._

_At lunch, it usually would have been the three of them at their little round table by the windows. Today, however, Renjun and Yerim sat with her other friends at one of the long tables in the cafeteria’s center. She wanted to introduce him to everyone -- the disparate years meant they knew little about him aside from the fact that he was “one of those two boys Yerim was always running around with.”_

_The other boy that Yerim was always running around with entered the cafeteria. Renjun could read the question mark on Jeno’s face from across the room._

_Jeno stood by their usual table, eyeing the three empty chairs. Then he looked at Renjun, and at the absence of an empty space beside him._

_Renjun slipped his arm around Yerim’s shoulder._

_Jeno turned and left the cafeteria, his lunch still clutched in his hands._

So he knows, _Renjun thought. An ember burned in his stomach, hot with guilt. But at the same time, it thrilled him. It thrilled him to know that, for the very first time, he had something Jeno did not. For the first time, Jeno was the jealous one, and not the other way around._

_When he turned back to the table, he discovered that now Yerim was the one staring at the door, where Jeno had just exited. She had not even noticed Renjun’s arm on her shoulder. She watched that door, mouth open like she might have called after him, but thought better of it._

_“Yerim,” Renjun said._

_She startled at his voice, and forced herself back into the moment. “Sorry,” she said. “What were we talking about?”_

_When they walked home from school later that day, Jeno did not walk with them._

\---

It was the end of the next school day. The halls were emptying as students hurried out, leaving it quiet enough for Renjun to hear his footsteps as he slunk towards the cracked classroom door.

He pushed it further open so he could peer through. The teacher had already gone, desk abandoned, and all the kids had already collected their bags and notebooks. However, one person lingered: Jeno, asleep in his chair, head resting on his folded arms.

Softly, Renjun shut the classroom door behind him and crossed to Jeno’s desk. The afternoon light from the window turned Jeno’s cheek to gold and made his lashes shimmer. Renjun stood over him, thinking of how he always wondered about Jeno sleeping. He remembered, when he’d stolen the locker combinations, how he’d paused at Jeno’s bedside, trying to picture what Jeno looked like as he slept. He’d thought that Jeno must sleep peacefully, worrilessly; but now, Jeno’s brows were scrunched, his lips drawn in a tight frown, as if he were having a bad dream.

Renjun’s gaze slid along, to the back of Jeno’s neck, to the locket’s clasp. He raised a hand, unable to resist the urge to drag a finger along the small, glimmering links of the chain --

“Oh -- Renjun.”

He backed away. Jeno’s head was raised, having woken suddenly, and he looked up at Renjun with a tired, confused expression.

“I must have fallen asleep,” he whispered to himself, clumsily gathering his books, seeming ashamed at being caught. “Sorry. Did you want something?”

Renjun sat down on the desk beside Jeno’s, crossing his legs, leaning back on his palms. “Were you dreaming about something?”

Jeno’s brows pinched as he swept his books into his bag. “I don’t know. I’ve got to go, Renjun, I --”

“Were you dreaming about me?”

Jeno froze. Then he pressed his lips together and wet them with his tongue. “What are you trying to say?” he asked quietly.

“What made you lose sleep last night, Jeno? Were you nervous about something?” Renjun tilted his head, in a gesture of devious, put-on innocence. “Did someone poke and prod where they didn’t belong?”

Renjun had not left it much of a secret. He’d raced out of the locker room so fast, he hadn’t had time to shut Jeno’s locket. He hadn’t even closed the locker -- it had been left open, lock undone, for Jeno to discover when he’d come back from practice. Renjun wondered how badly Jeno had been shaken by the sight of it, knowing that someone had seen that photograph.

“It was you,” Jeno said.

“You know, I always thought there was something weird about you. Even when we were kids. But I was too young to see it clearly then.”

Jeno turned his face away, down towards the floor, demure and deferential. It drove Renjun crazy. He didn’t want Jeno to simply be passive. He wanted to make him angry.

“I always thought you had everything,” Renjun went on. “You always won, and then you pitied me.” He raised a hand and tapped a finger to his chest. “But all this time, I was right over your heart. You loved me, and I would never love you back -- and I never will. Isn’t that sad? Isn’t it some kind of cruel twist of fate?” He shook his head softly, chidingly. “In the end, I was the winner. Because the one thing you really want, you can’t have.”

Jeno, exasperated, let out a wry, heartbroken laugh, and said, “It was never a game, Renjun. I wasn’t trying to win anything.”

“It’s always a game. That’s just how it is,” Renjun said. “And I finally beat you in it.”

Jeno opened his mouth to speak again, but quickly closed it. Like he saw the edge, the breaking point, and was refusing to step over it.

Renjun needed to give him an extra push.

“How pathetic -- you, staring at that photo of me when no one’s looking. Do you kiss it good night when you go to bed?” Renjun remained cold and expressionless, staring down at Jeno like he was an ant. “Do you dream about kissing me? About me being sweet to you?”

Jeno swallowed. Renjun watched the difficulty with which he did it, the frown lacing his lips.

“Do you think about me when you masturbate?”

The line was crossed. Jeno stood abruptly in his chair, its legs screeching against the floor.

“Stop it,” he said. His voice was rough and low -- the first sign of anger Renjun had ever been able to squeeze out of him. Close, but not enough.

Renjun stood, too, and they were only a few inches apart. He leaned in so that he could smell Jeno’s discomfort, almost tasting it. “Why? What if I don’t stop?”

“Just let me go,” Jeno said.

Instead, Renjun took another step. He pressed his face into the shoulder of Jeno’s jacket, fingers hooking into the front of his shirt. Jeno went still beneath his touch as if he’d turned to stone, and Renjun smirked against the side of his neck. He breathed Jeno in, relishing the moment, the intimacy, the cunning of it. His arms slipped up, circling Jeno’s neck, making it a proper embrace.

It lingered. The light from the window was half-dying, half-gold.

Jeno was so shocked, so unsure whether he should push Renjun off or pull him closer, that he didn’t notice Renjun’s fingers as they worked the clasp of his locket.

Quickly, Renjun bounded backwards, between the rows of desks, Jeno’s locket trailing in his fist. He held it up to the light, making it shine.

Jeno’s breath caught audibly, and he said, “Renjun.”

“I think this ought to belong to me now. It’s my picture, after all.”

“Give it back to me.” Jeno held out his hand, pleading.

Renjun swished the chain, as if teasing a cat with a length of yarn. “Maybe I’ll show it to all the guys on the baseball team. I’m sure they’ll have a good laugh about it.”

“Renjun,” Jeno said again. He pushed forward and snatched Renjun’s wrist, squeezing it hard enough to hurt. “I said to give it back to me.”

There it was. The reaction Renjun had been begging for, and now that he had it, he was almost scared of it. He’d never seen Jeno angry before. Not even as children -- Jeno had always been the even-tempered one, the one to settle arguments rather than start them. But now, his eyes were narrowed and his lips stretched into a thin grimace.

Renjun twisted his arm, trying to free himself, to no avail.

“Jeno,” he whispered.

The sound of his name from Renjun’s mouth jarred him into awareness and, shocked at himself, Jeno let Renjun go. He looked down at his own hand, bending his fingers, fearful at his own strength.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

Some small part of Renjun wanted to give the locket back. Half because he felt sorry, and half because he thought that maybe, a bit of bad luck might follow him, attached to a stolen trinket. Bad luck, for the desecration of a first love.

In the end, he still shoved it into his pocket, and ran out of the classroom.

\---

When Renjun got home, he tugged open his desk drawer, and placed Jeno’s locket on top of his sketchbook.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i'm sorry for making u all suffer like this
> 
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	7. Jeno

Finally, as the spring semester neared its end, Jeno asked the homeroom teacher if he could move seats.

The teacher responded by pushing his glasses up his nose, puzzlement obvious behind the lenses. “Sure, I suppose. But can I ask why?”

“It’s not a big issue.” Jeno gave his typical, easy smile, hoping it would dispel any suspicion. “I just don’t like sitting so close to the window. It’s too distracting.” 

“Really? Your grades are just fine. I didn’t realize there was an issue.”

“It’s just a personal preference, I guess.”

The teacher gathered his papers into a pile and tapped them on his desk to straighten them. “Alright. There’s an empty seat behind Jungmin, right? Why don’t you move over there, starting tomorrow?”

Jungmin. Opposite side of the room, near the door. About as far from Renjun as one could sit.

Jeno bowed, said thank you, and left.

\---

_Jeno could recall the moment he realized he was in love with Renjun in vivid detail. So vivid, it almost hurt -- the colors too bright, the memory of Renjun’s touch too dangerous._

_Twelve years old. They sat on the flat rock in their hollow. Renjun was crying. Jeno hated to see Renjun cry, but at the same time, he cherished it, because he was the only person Renjun felt comfortable crying around. He cried in front of Yerim sometimes, but when he did, he always tried to hide it, because crying in front of a girl was shameful in his mind. In front of Jeno, though, he always cried in earnest, knowing that Jeno would not judge him. He would only pat Renjun’s back and wait the tears out, with his usual, eternal patience._

_That occasion, Renjun was crying because his father had thrown out a stuffed animal he’d had since he was a baby. At around nine, he’d begun to hide it at the bottom of his closet, and told his father he’d lost it, for fear that this exact thing would happen. But then his father had discovered it, and insisted that Renjun was too old for such a thing, and tossed the little puppy with a bow around its neck into the trash._

_Presently, Renjun wiped uselessly at the tears on his cheeks while Jeno sat beside him, close enough that Renjun might find comfort in it, but not so close as to smother him. He waited, listening to his airy sobs, watching his small hand where it sat in his lap, fingers twisted tensely into his pant leg._

_Gently, Jeno took that hand. He turned it so its palm faced up, and began to ghost his index finger over it, drawing onto Renjun’s skin. This was something he did everytime Renjun cried, because it helped to distract him and calm him down. Jeno would write letters onto Renjun’s palm, and Renjun would try to guess them, and by the time they were done, Renjun would stop crying because instead he was giggling at the tickling on his skin._

_Jeno drew slowly at first, starting easy._

_“C?” Renjun guessed through a sob._

_“Yeah.” Jeno drew another letter._

_“Z?”_

_“Mmhmm.”_

_It continued for a while. Jeno could see Renjun’s breath becoming even again, his heartbeat losing its panicked thunder._

_“B?”_

_“No.”_

_Renjun’s brows curved. “Is it more than one letter?”_

_“It’s a picture this time.”_

_“A picture?” The very smallest hint of a smile broke through on Renjun’s face. His fingers twitched against Jeno’s. “Do it again.”_

_Jeno did. His fingertip stuttered over the lines of Renjun’s hand. It was so soft, so delicate. Jeno had always thought that Renjun seemed to be made of paper._

_“I give up,” Renjun said. “What was it?”_

_“A butterfly.” Jeno did it one more time. Two wings, two curly antennas, a long, slim body. “See?”_

_“Oh --” Renjun broke into a giggle, tears forgotten. It crinkled his eyes and exposed his crooked-toothed smile, the one that Jeno had been trying to get a photo of for a year, though Renjun would never smile for a camera. His hand pressed into Jeno’s, squeezing it, their fingers half-linking. There was nothing in the world that made Jeno happier than making Renjun laugh._

_Renjun leaned his head against Jeno’s shoulder. The faintest warmth of his breath touched Jeno’s neck._

_A strange murmuring prickled in Jeno’s stomach, and spread lower._

_Quickly, he let go of Renjun’s hand and turned his body away._

_“What is it?” Renjun asked, but then he seemed to realize, too, how close together they’d been, because he went uncomfortably quiet. They sat side by side on the rock, the few inches of distance between them feeling like a canyon._

_Jeno waited several long minutes for his blush to fade before he finally faced Renjun again. They didn’t speak as they treaded back down the hill, down the street, Renjun departing at the corner beneath the streetlight._

_When Jeno fell back onto his bed, one thought kept ringing through his mind, so clear and sharp that it cut every other thought down._

I’m in love with Renjun.

_He’d never been in love before. But somehow, he knew that was exactly what it was. There was no other explanation for the goosebumps, the shivers, as if some deep, private part of him was being plucked like a tremulous string and its vibrations were ringing through his body. The feeling that a secret door had opened, the sunlight had slipped through, and he was standing at the precipice of a world he’d never known existed. The feeling that, if Renjun had asked him to, he would have thrown his entire life away and followed him anywhere, without even giving a second thought or sparing a glance back._

_Jeno pressed both hands over his face, and realized they were trembling._

\---

In the evening, Jeno sat at his desk in his room. He was working on one of his college applications, because they were due by the end of June, yet he hadn’t completed a single one. He knew it was important -- his whole future depended on it -- but somehow, he couldn’t force himself to care about it. Everything seemed so insignificant when he wasn’t wearing his locket around his neck. It was the only thing that had really mattered to him for a long time.

He sighed, shut his laptop, and collapsed on top of it, forehead against forearms. He didn’t want to cry again. He’d already cried all night the night before, and he’d thought that he’d run out of tears, but he could feel them coming back. He wanted to run away from them.

There was a soft tapping at his bedroom door. He turned his head to see his father standing there, hand on the knob, somber-faced.

“Hey,” his father said. “Everything alright?”

“I’m fine,” Jeno responded.

The deepening of the lines at the side of his father’s mouth meant that he did not believe it. It happened so often now -- the feeling that his father didn’t trust what he was saying, but never pushed it further. It didn’t used to be like that. It didn’t used to feel like they were so disconnected, as if they stood on opposite ends of a landslide, ground unlevel, unable to see eye-to-eye.

But this time, his father lingered. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” Jeno admitted.

“Did something happen?”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

Jeno’s eyes stung. He turned his face away again, back into the sleeve of his hoodie.

His father crossed the room and sat down at the end of Jeno’s bed. Jeno heard the plush bending of the mattress beneath him. “You know,” he started. “Sometimes, I think I’m not a good enough father for you. That was one of the things that scared me the most after your mom passed -- not just being without her, but having to fill her space. Having to raise you all alone. And now you’re eighteen, practically an adult, and I still don’t know that I ever figured it out.”

Jeno was guilt-stricken. None of it had ever been his father’s fault. He’d done everything for Jeno. He’d taught himself to cook for Jeno’s sake, picked up more hours at work to support him, made sure Jeno never felt neglected or lonely. But Jeno’s withholdingness had made him feel like a failure.

Jeno twisted in his chair and said, forcefully, “Don’t say that. You’re the best dad I could ask for. Really.” And he meant it, wholeheartedly. There was no one he loved more. “Mom would be so proud of you.”

His father gave a bashful smile. He looked down at his folded hands, and began to gently turn the gold wedding band on his finger. “I still wish your mother was here, every single day. For a million reasons. But one of them is because I wonder if she might know better than me. When I see you struggling, I want to help you. But I’m afraid of breaching a boundary and making it worse. Your mother -- she always knew exactly how to help you. She was tough. Maybe she wouldn’t have left you so much to your own devices.”

She _had_ been tough. She’d always been fierce and loving and unafraid. Nothing had proved it better than her tenacity in her hospital bed, the way that every time a doctor delivered more unfortunate news, she would only sit rail-straight against her pillow, roll up her sleeves as if she were about to fight her own diagnosis, and say, “It isn’t over yet. I’ve lived through this thing for months --” She would lean over the bedside, pinch Jeno’s cheek, and add, “-- so who’s to say I won’t live through it for a few more?”

Eventually, her months ran out. But even then, Jeno’s father had never let the mourning take priority over his son.

“I just wish I knew whether I was doing the right thing,” he continued. “I wish I could talk to her. Maybe she could tell me what I should do.”

Jeno stood and walked to the bed, sitting beside his father. It occurred to him then that they were the same height now, and that alone seemed to knit some of the distance. Just like Jeno often worried over what to do, what others might think, so did his dad.

“I miss her, too,” Jeno said.

His father slung an arm around his shoulders, a half-hug. “Jeno. Promise, if something’s the matter, you’ll tell me.”

Jeno’s hand found his chest. There was no locket. Something he would have to get used to.

He resigned himself to it, and answered, “Okay. I will.”

“Alright.” The relief could be heard in his father’s voice. Maybe he didn’t completely believe Jeno, but at the very least, he seemed comforted at putting everything on the table, verbalizing the way he’d been feeling. It was the first step to understanding. “What do you think of visiting your mother’s grave some time soon? It’s been a little while. It might be nice.”

“Yeah. That sounds good.”

His father got up, pressed a kiss to the top of Jeno’s head, and said, “I’ll go start dinner. Want to help?”

“Sure,” Jeno responded. “In just a minute.”

He waited for his father to leave and shut the door behind him. When he was alone again, he walked back to his desk, sinking down into the chair, which rolled gently under his weight.

In front of him was his tackboard. On his tackboard was the photo from his thirteenth birthday party, the one that Renjun had been taken out of so that he could be placed inside the locket. Jeno realized that that was the very last time that things had made sense. When they were still kids. When he and Renjun had been able to understand each other.

Jeno took in a shallow breath. Frantically, he pulled open his desk draw and dug, past his planner and pencils and folders. All the way to the bottom where it was hidden, a piece of paper folded inside another piece of paper. It was like unearthing a time capsule.

He had not looked at it in nearly five years. The note he’d begun to pen, and never finished. He remembered when he’d started writing it, sitting in class, watching Renjun chew his lip a few rows ahead. The same moment that Renjun had walked over and said the words that made Jeno first realize that things would no longer be the same from then on.

_What do you think about Yerim lately? Do you ever get the feeling she might like you?_

Jeno had been so shocked, so hurt by Renjun’s nonchalance as if it didn’t matter a lick to him, that he had folded his note and placed it inside his backpack. When he’d gotten home, he’d buried it in that drawer, ashamed at writing it in the first place.

He read it now, leaning over his desk, lamp making his letter gold.

_Dear Renjun,_

_I guess it’s kind of weird for me to write you a note since I could just talk to you anytime. But for some reason I feel like it isn’t so easy to say things directly to you anymore. Like I wouldn’t be able to put what I mean to say properly into words. I don’t even know what I mean to say, really. I’m sorry this note doesn’t make any sense._

_Anyway… do things feel different to you lately? Maybe I’m just crazy. But I feel like the three of us -- me, you, Yerim -- we don’t have fun the same way we used to. It makes me really sad. I don’t want us to ever drift apart. It scares me._

_I’m scared of a lot of things lately. Some of them are embarrassing to say out loud. I guess that’s why I have this letter, but even writing them makes me anxious. Because I don’t know how you would react. Because sometimes I think I’m imagining things, little things between us, but maybe you can feel them, too. Maybe they’re real, and I’m just too scared to ask you._

_Are you happy being friends with me, Renjun? If you are, then that’s okay. I won’t ask for anything to change. I won’t ask you what I want to ask you. It might be better to leave things the way they are, so that the three of us can be friends forever._

_But if you ever thought about something different… if you ever wanted to change our friendship, then_

The letter ended there. Even as a child, even during a simpler time, Jeno could never just spit it out. He was always evading the truth. And he’d come so _close_ in that letter, so close to saying it: _I’m in love with you_. But the letter had never reached its recipient, and after that, Jeno had only become more of a coward. He’d hid his love away inside his locket, where he’d thought no one would be able to find it.

The truth was out now. There was nothing left to hide.

Jeno uncapped a pen, dark blue ink in contrast with the letter’s faded pencil. He began to write in the place that the message ended, finally finishing it.

 _Renjun. I started this letter five years ago. I know you hate me. I know you think I’m stupid. I know nothing I say now will get through to you. So that’s why I have this letter. Because back then, we_ did _understand each other. So maybe, the words of thirteen-year-old Jeno will still be able to reach you, even if eighteen-year-old Jeno can’t._

_All I want to add now, is that I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt you or keep secrets from you. I never meant for things to turn out like this. Your friendship meant the world to me, and I miss it every day. And yes, I still have feelings for you. But if how I feel makes you uncomfortable, then I don’t want to drag things out. So if you never talk to me again, that’s okay. As long we can stop fighting, and just move on. I could learn to be happy like that. And I just want you to be happy, too._

_You can keep the locket._

_Jeno_

He folded it back up, and slid it into the front pocket of his backpack.

\---

At school the next morning, Jeno sat in his new seat for the first time. It was awkward, sliding into his chair with the other students around him. A few of them casted him curious glances while leaning to whisper in their neighbor’s ear. Jeno’s ears went red. He rubbed the back of his neck.

There wasn’t anything he hated more than school gossip; it was how the worst news had always found him. It always gave him goosebumps, even when the rumors had nothing to do with him. He dreaded to think what explanations they would come up with for his sudden seat change.

Renjun walked into homeroom. He went to his desk and sat down. He must have thought that Jeno simply had not arrived yet, because he didn’t regard the empty chair in front of him with any suspicion. Then, he turned to unzip his backpack, and he caught sight of Jeno on the far side of the room, and his lazy morning demeanor changed. Almost robotically, his eyes narrowed and his head lowered.

He stood back up and walked to Jeno’s desk.

“You moved seats,” he said. It was an observation, but it sounded like a loaded weapon.

Jeno shrugged, half-dismissive, half as if he was trying to shield himself. “Yeah. I did.”

Renjun squared his jaw. He’d lost proximity on his play thing. He’d lost an ounce of his power.

“Why?” he asked, already knowing the reason.

“I don’t know. I just wanted to.”

“Because you’re a coward.”

“Yeah,” Jeno agreed.

He could see an icy fire in Renjun’s eyes. But the boy seemed to remember that they were not alone and, sullenly, he went back to his seat. He sat and slammed his notebook on his desk.

Where he’d sat before, Jeno had not had the benefit of looking at Renjun when he’d wanted without having to swivel completely around in his chair. It had been one of the other awful things about that seat, aside from it making him a sitting duck for Renjun’s attacks. Now, from the other side of the room, he could watch him. He was so different from the Renjun of his childhood. Taller, sharper, his soft features adapted into something more elegant. A cruel kind of beauty. In the past few years, he’d had his braces on, and then off. He’d grown his hair, so it touched just below his brow. The changes suited him. He’d become so pretty, and Jeno, just as he did now, had always been forced to watch from a distance.

Jeno hoped, prayed, that some part of him was still the same boy he’d always known.

When class ended, Jeno waited for Renjun to switch his books at his locker. Then, he approached, made sure no one was looking, and slipped his letter in through one of the slats in the locker door.

\---

Things were fine, until after lunch.

Jeno stopped at his own locker to replace his lunchbox and grab his notebook for next period. The other students milled around him, heads bent low together, voices mingled. Jeno didn’t pay them any mind. He did not realize that they were talking about him.

Then, one of the boys from the baseball team approached, leaning against the wall beside Jeno. “Hey. Is that thing real?”

Jeno balanced his backpack on his raised knee as he zipped it, too preoccupied to even look at him. “Pardon?”

“It’s cool if it is. I’m not judging you or anything. I was just curious. Actually, my cousin --”

“What are you talking about?” Jeno dropped his backpack on the tile floor with a thump. _Now_ , his attention was caught, and he fixed the boy with a confused, cocked-brow stare.

“Do you not know --”

Suddenly, there was a hand on Jeno’s arm, and he turned to his other side to find Jaemin, out of breath. He was bent over, trying to collect himself, and quickly said, voice hushed, “Hey. Jeno. I need to tell you something.”

Jeno felt as though a block of ice was melting in his stomach. Whatever had happened, he knew then that it was not good, and it was about him.

He stepped away from his locker and gazed up and down the hall, for the first time taking in the whole scene. Some students passed by, but most of them were gathered down at the school’s bulletin board, where club flyers and exam grades were typically posted. People shuffled around, trying to push their way to the front, standing on tiptoes to peer over each other’s heads.

Jeno ran towards them.

“Wait --” Jaemin called, trying to catch Jeno’s sleeve, but his fingers closed on empty air.

Jeno found a place in the back, trying to see whatever it was they were looking at. He caught a few snippets of snide whispers.

“What’s it supposed to be? A love letter?”

“I guess so. God, that’s embarrassing.”

“‘I still have feelings for you’... oh man. Someone should take it down, at least out of pity.”

“No way. This is the funniest thing to happen all year.”

A head bobbled out of the way, and Jeno could see his letter, unfolded and exposed, tacked in the center of the bulletin board.

He was aware of Jaemin’s hand, again on his arm, and he said something, but Jeno couldn’t hear it. He couldn’t hear anything. He turned his head, and at the far end of the hall, Renjun was talking with a few of his friends, so casually, as if nothing was happening.

He noticed Jeno looking at him. He met his eyes, and smiled.

\---

Jeno slammed the stall door shut. It rattled on its hinges but didn’t latch, left open a crack as he sat down on the toilet lid and buried his face in his hands. He forced himself to breathe. It felt like a full-body pinch, like the stall walls were closing in around him.

“Jeno.” Knuckles tapped at the door. Through the crack, Jeno could see a sliver of Jaemin’s face. He had followed him. “Can I come in?”

Jeno didn’t respond. Jaemin came in anyway. He looked pensively down at Jeno, then pressed his back to the stall and slid down it so he sat on the floor. Settling in for the long haul, because he knew Jeno would need time.

“Here,” Jaemin said. He nudged Jeno’s hand so he could push something into it. It was the letter, torn from the bulletin board, but blessedly still in one piece. “I thought you should have this back. They didn’t have any right to read it.”

“Thanks,” Jeno managed hoarsely. He ran his thumbs over the words, wishing he could rub them away.

“You really wrote it, then? It’s your letter?”

“Yeah.”

Jaemin’s hand moved from the letter to Jeno’s knee, giving it a gentle, comforting pat. “I want you to know -- if anyone says anything to you about it, I’ll kick their ass. I’m not kidding. I’ve got your back, no matter what.”

Jeno ran his sleeve over his eyes, and remembered back to the time shortly after his mother’s death, when he’d been in the exact same position. Miserable, afraid, hiding in the bathroom. A boy had found him then, except now that boy was the one to drive him into the stall. Their roles had changed. Jeno wished they hadn’t, but still, he was glad that someone had been there to save him this time, even if it couldn’t be Renjun. If nostalgia hadn’t always clouded his vision, he would have been able to see that Jaemin was the best friend he’d ever had.

“You don’t have to answer if you don’t want,” Jaemin began, “but that letter -- does it mean you’re in love with him? Is that what you were trying to say in it?”

“Yeah,” Jeno admitted.

“Maybe I only know half the story. But to me, he doesn’t seem like someone worth loving.”

Wasn’t that what Renjun’s own father had convinced him? That he wasn’t worth loving? Maybe, Jeno thought, if you called someone something enough times, they would become it. Maybe, all those times Renjun had been told he couldn’t be loved, it had chipped away at him, until he was precisely that. Unloveable, and so convinced of it, that he couldn’t find a way to fix himself.

“But even then,” Jaemin went on, “I can’t believe he would do this. Why would he want to embarrass you like that?”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Jeno laughed, bitter and self-deriding. “He hates me.”

“Really?” Jaemin blew out a small, disbelieving breath between his teeth. “I thought he was in love with _you_.”

Jeno’s heartbeat stilled. The walls that had been closing in on him stopped in their tracks. “What?”

“I wasn’t going to tell you, to try and be kind to him --” Jaemin scratched idly at his cheek, still seeming a little guilty at sharing the secret. “But his sketchbook is filled with drawings of you. Really good drawings, too. I found it on the locker room floor. When I returned it to him, he was so embarrassed -- his face was bright red. I’d never seen him like that before.”

Jeno wanted to be hopeful, but he couldn’t force himself to be after so long, after being burned so many times. He’d been pushed too far, right over the edge, but he hadn’t realized it until he’d already hit rock bottom.

“He doesn’t love me,” Jeno decided. “He doesn’t even know what love is.”

Jaemin’s mouth opened, like he was about to disagree. But he seemed to have realized that things ran deeper -- far, far deeper -- than he had even known. He was on the outside looking in. He was hardly less a spectator than the boys in the hall had been.

If he wanted to know the whole truth, he did not ask. They continued to sit in the quiet bathroom long after the next bell rang: Jeno, out of shame, Jaemin, out of patience.

\---

_When Jeno first heard the rumor, he couldn’t believe it._

_“Renjun and Yerim are dating,” one of his classmates had told him during gym class._

_Jeno had stopped dribbling his basketball. “What?”_

_“Didn’t you hear? They started dating this morning, before homeroom.”_

_Jeno pressed both hands on either side of the basketball, hard enough it almost burst. “That’s ridiculous. Where’d you hear it?”_

_“From Youngjae. But he said he heard it from Renjun.”_

_They couldn’t be dating, Jeno thought. All they did was bicker and complain about each other. Sure, it wasn’t serious. But couples didn’t act like that, did they? And neither of them had ever said anything to Jeno about liking each other. Neither of them had ever even had a crush, so far as he knew._

_Jeno tossed his ball at the net. It hit the backboard, danced above the net like it might fall through, then bounced off the rim and went flying._

_At lunch, he entered the cafeteria. Everything would be okay. He would walk in, and Renjun and Yerim would be waiting for him, and they would explain to him how the rumor had simply been a huge misunderstanding that had spread out of control. He looked over to their usual round table._

_They were not sitting there. For a moment he thought they were simply late. Then he saw the end of Yerim’s braid, draped over her back above the bench of the long table. To one side were the other eighth-graders she hung out with at school. To her other side was Renjun._

_Jeno didn’t move from the doorway. His mouth felt dry. Anxiously, he licked his lips._

_Renjun’s gaze flickered over to him. He didn’t call Jeno over. He didn’t wave. He slipped his arm over Yerim’s shoulder._

_Jeno turned and bolted out of the cafeteria._

_He did not eat his lunch. He went to the nurse’s office and told her he had a stomach ache. A few minutes later, his father came to pick him up. Jeno did not say anything to him the whole car ride home._

_Finally alone behind his shut door, curled up in bed, he started to cry._

_When Renjun had asked him about Yerim the other day -- had he been testing the waters? Had he only told Jeno that Yerim liked him to see Jeno’s reaction? To make sure that Jeno was not interested in her, so he could swoop in himself and ask her out? Why had Renjun never told Jeno that he liked Yerim? What had happened, that they were no longer honest with each other?_

_Renjun liked Yerim, and he did not like Jeno._

_Jeno buried his face in his pillow, trying to silence his crying in case his father heard._

_The next day at school, neither Renjun nor Yerim acknowledged Jeno. Very weakly, he tried to say hi to them when they walked in the front door. They only linked their hands and swept right past him, as if he did not exist._

_Then, in the afternoon, the students were allowed to go outside and enjoy the warm, late-spring day. Jeno was invited to play kickball with some of the other boys in his class. He joined them, thinking anything to get his mind off of what had happened would be good. But as he stood in line at home base, awaiting his turn, he noticed the two of them tucked into an alcove in the school’s side, sitting on the concrete steps. Yerim was playing a game on her phone, and Renjun was leaning over her shoulder. They did not bicker. They sat in their own little world, as if showing off their new relationship, making it obvious to every other kid in the school that they were an exclusive item._

_Renjun always seemed to have a sixth sense to know when Jeno was looking at him. Suddenly, he leaned closer, and kissed Yerim on the lips._

_His eyes were open. He was watching Jeno the whole time._

_When Yerim pulled back, her face was deep red. Her first kiss, and Renjun’s first, too. She smacked him gently on the arm, but it was clear she was thrilled, if only to be able to say she’d done it. ‘First kiss,’ checked off her list, right below ‘get a boyfriend.’_

_Jeno quietly retreated from the kickball line, and went back inside the school, trying to find a place where he could breathe without the suffocating press of Renjun’s gaze._

_Three days passed. Three days, without a single word exchanged. Jeno walked to school alone in the mornings, and walked back alone in the afternoon. He always waited until Renjun and Yerim left first, long enough so that he would not be forced to watch their backs all the way there. It was the only way he knew how to protect himself._

_Finally, on the fourth day, Jeno spoke to Renjun._

_He saw Renjun and Yerim outside on their street, eating ice cream cones and taking pictures on their phones, looking like a perfectly happy pair. He’d used to think the fact that all three of them lived on the same street was a blessing, a miraculous coincidence, because it allowed them to be inseparable. Now, it meant that he could simply look out his window and be faced by the painful reminder of what had happened._

_He waited, until Renjun walked Yerim home and said goodbye to her at her front steps. He continued on, heading back towards his apartment. Jeno pulled on his sneakers and ran out, jogging down the sidewalk to catch up._

_“Renjun,” he called after him, as they approached the C of the apartment complex. Renjun stopped with one foot at the base of the stairs, looking coldly over his shoulder._

_“Please --” Jeno said, hurriedly, trying to squeeze the words in before Renjun could slip away. “I just want to know what happened. You and Yerim --”_

_“We don’t have to explain anything to you.”_

_Jeno’s stomach ached so hard, he pressed a hand to his abdomen, trying to hold himself together. Being around Renjun used to make him happier than anything. Now, it made him completely sick with sadness. “Please. I understand that you’re dating now. But I don’t understand why you won’t even talk to me.” His voice cracked as he added, “I don’t know what I did wrong.”_

_“We got sick of you,” Renjun responded, leaning back on the stair railing. “I don’t want to be your friend anymore, and Yerim doesn’t, either. So you’d better just leave us alone.”_

_Jeno looked away, so that Renjun wouldn’t see the budding tears._

_“I knew you liked her,” Renjun went on, unprovoked, as if he was enjoying it. “I knew you liked her, so I took her from you.”_

_“What?” Jeno was so shocked, his mouth hung open. He couldn’t even find the words to tell the truth. He was taken too off guard._

_“I took her from you. That way, you can’t be happy. You don’t deserve to be.” He stomped up the rest of the steps, up to his front door, and slammed it shut behind him._

_Jeno crouched on the sidewalk, and found he was shaking, the same as he’d been the day he’d fallen in love._

_Yerim moved away six months later. Her dad was relocated for work again. She and Renjun, as far as Jeno knew, were dating until the very end. Jeno did not say goodbye to her. But he did receive a series of text messages, saying things like,_ I’m sorry, Can we talk?, I never meant for it to be like this. _Jeno deleted every single one._

_Even so, he was not mad at her. And he wasn’t mad at Renjun, either, even though he knew he had every right to be._

_When he was sixteen, he would pass an antique shop window, and see a little golden locket on display. And he would go inside, drawn to it, wanting to preserve his love under its glass. That way, he could make it last forever._

\---

Jeno’s father was not home, which was fine by him. He needed time alone. He needed space to think.

He should never have written that letter. He should have torn it, the same as he’d done to Yerim’s, and thrown it away. Now the entire school knew. They knew he loved Renjun, and they knew he was pathetic for it. Jeno lay on the couch, facing the back cushion, not even turning on the TV to block out the noise inside his head. He wanted to drown in it, wallow in it.

The silence made the knocking at his door crystal clear.

Jeno almost did not answer it. He didn’t want to. Part of him knew exactly who it was. Maybe that was why he finally gave in. He needed an answer, a conclusion.

He got up, took slow, creaking steps to the door. He turned the knob. Renjun stood on his front step, hands clasped behind his back, face subtle and expressionless.

Jeno refused to speak first. Renjun seemed more than happy to do so, anyway.

“I want to talk to you,” he said. “Can I come in?”

“I’d really rather not,” Jeno murmured. “Not after today.”

“You’re really that upset?”

The carelessness for the harm he’d caused made it hurt all over again. “Of course I am,” Jeno said. “You humiliated me in front of everybody. That was a private letter, Renjun. You knew that, but you put it up anyway.”

Renjun shrugged. “You gave it to me. I was free to do what I wanted with it.” He took a step closer. “I said, I want to talk to you. If you want a response to your letter, then let me in.”

Jeno stood down, like he always did. Renjun pushed past into the entryway, a thin smile on his lips, like a king striding into land under his dominion.

“So,” he began, fingering the edge of the lace table runner on the front stand. “Are you mad at me for it, Jeno? As mad as you were when I took your locket?”

Jeno remembered the way the anger had bolted through him, so suddenly that he had been unable to control it. He’d snatched Renjun’s wrist, squeezing. He was afraid that, subconsciously, he had wanted to hurt him. Hurting Renjun had used to be the very last thing he’d ever wanted to do, but those past few weeks had begun to change him. He didn’t like the Jeno he’d become.

“I’m sorry,” Jeno said. He was sick of apologizing, but he never knew what else to do. “When you took it, and I grabbed you -- I shouldn’t have done that.”

Renjun’s hand ran over the face of a little porcelain angel on the table. The angel Jeno had received from his grandmother, on the birthday just after his mother’s passing. Renjun traced its glossy lips and baby blue eyes. “Christ, Jeno. Don’t you ever get sick of being a doormat?”

“I don’t know. I’m not trying to be a doormat. I just want this to be over.”

“It ought to make you happy, shouldn’t it? Me paying you so much attention.” His hand slunk along the runner, to a framed photograph of Jeno and his parents from his kindergarten graduation. He was so little, blissful, surrounded by love. He sat on his father’s knee, hugged around his middle. His father smiled in a way that seemed impossible now, because time had worn it away. Beside them, his mother was beaming. She did not yet know she was dying. That was what Jeno treasured most about that photo -- their normalcy, and their unknowingness of what was to come.

“You’re letting me keep the locket, then,” Renjun continued. “You know, I had half a mind to return it to you, because every time I look at it it makes me sick. But the thought of you wearing it makes me even sicker.”

“Stop it.”

“You don’t have the guts to make me.” He picked up the photo, turning it under the light. His thumb dragged along the side of little Jeno’s face, almost as if gently caressing it. “What if I shattered this picture? Would that be enough to make you hate me?”

It almost was. He felt an impulsive prickle, the same one he’d had at Renjun stealing his locket, and rushed forward, closing his hand on the frame’s edge. “Give it to me,” he said.

Renjun yanked it back. “You’ll have to do better than that.”

“Renjun. Please.”

“Why? Are you mad?”

Jeno tried for it again. Renjun jerked the photo away, so Jeno grabbed his arm instead, trying to wrestle it free. “Renjun. Give it to me, now.”

“Then hit me,” he taunted. “If you want it back so bad, then hit me. Otherwise, I’ll toss it on the floor.”

“I’m not going to hit you.” Jeno’s grip loosened on Renjun’s arm.

Renjun did as he’d promised. He raised the photo and flung it at the ground. It landed face down, glass audibly cracking. Renjun was breathing as if breaking it had exhilarated him, lips curling in a pleased smile. “Hit me,” he demanded again.

Jeno stared down at the photo, the broken glass. He furled and unfurled the fingers of his free hand, standing in limbo, part of him wanting to do exactly what Renjun said. It took all his willpower not to.

He let go of Renjun’s arm. “No. You should leave.”

The smile on Renjun’s face died. He was angry like Jeno should have been. So angry, he was trembling.

He raised his hands, and shoved Jeno back, palms against shoulders. Jeno hit the hallway wall, not hard enough to hurt, but the simple fact of Renjun laying a hand on him was painful enough to make up for it. “Hit me,” Renjun shouted.

The pain brought Jeno the faintest sense of clarity. What was Renjun trying to say? What was hidden in those words, the double meaning, the truth at the heart of them? Renjun was desperate to provoke, but Jeno was not so sure a punch was what he was really looking for, because when had Renjun ever said what he’d really meant?

Jeno remembered what Jaemin had told him. He remembered noticing the sketchbook on Renjun’s desk, and being scolded for it, because Renjun had been keeping his secret inside it, the same way Jeno had kept his secret in his locket.

Renjun shoved him again. This time, Jeno grabbed both of his wrists and pinned him back against the opposite wall. And before Renjun could spit another venomous word, Jeno kissed him. It was not a deep kiss or a warm kiss or a happy kiss. Like everything in the past few years, it was a struggle. Renjun allowed it only for the briefest of moments before he was kicking at Jeno’s feet, pushing back against his grip.

Jeno stopped kissing him, backing away, afraid at what he’d done. He’d crossed that line again, but this time, it was worse. It was unforgivable. He thought the expression he’d find on Renjun’s face would be pure fire, a curse on the tip of his tongue, but it wasn’t.

Renjun was crying. Large tears, overdue, dribbled down his cheeks. Jeno hated to see Renjun cry. And he hated it even more now that he was the one to cause it. 

“I’m sorry,” Jeno said, and he meant it. He let go of Renjun’s wrists to cradle his face, trying to mop the tears. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to -- no, I made a mistake. I’m sorry.”

Renjun kept crying, defiantly, staring up into Jeno’s eyes. His hands settled on top of Jeno's, nails sharp on Jeno’s skin, but not pushing him away.

In the quiet, Jeno realized they were breathing in time. Renjun’s face drifted closer, as if trying to share a single breath, trying to breathe Jeno in. Their foreheads touched.

Renjun kissed him. The kiss was wet with tears, slick and hot and five years too late. They’d waited so long, they couldn’t bear to wait any longer. Renjun was already tracing his tongue along Jeno’s lip, demanding more from him, wanting all of him. To Jeno, none of it felt real. He’d dreamed this scenario so many times. He’d always woken up sweating and red-faced, hurrying to the bathroom to wash away the shame. But this was better than a dream. He pushed into Renjun’s mouth, tongue touching the edge of his top teeth, tasting the beginning of Renjun’s moan.

Jeno had never been intimate like that before, and neither had Renjun. They were over-eager to explore it, Jeno’s hands reaching around Renjun’s waist, brushing the hem of his t-shirt. His pinky met the bare skin at Renjun’s hip, and even that little bit of contact made Jeno flush with excitement. He slipped his hand under, flat on Renjun’s back, while his mouth worked lower, pressing opened-mouth kisses against Renjun’s neck. He was intoxicating. He made it impossible to think clearly. Maybe, that was how Jeno had never managed to hate him. He’d been too drunk on him to know better. And now, he was too drunk on him to realize how dangerous it all was.

Renjun stole him back for another kiss, a filthy kiss, hard and deep. They broke it to breathe, bodies still pressed together, still in tandem, and Jeno could feel Renjun’s arousal against his.

“Fuck me,” Renjun begged. His fist was curled into the front of Jeno’s shirt. “Please.”

Jeno, for just a moment, considered saying no. It was the obvious right answer. But his gaze settled at Renjun’s throat, where a residual teardrop clung at his Adam’s apple, so pretty, begging to be licked away. If Renjun’s goal the whole time had been to push Jeno to his breaking point, he had succeeded.

They stumbled into Jeno’s room. Renjun shut the door behind them and claimed Jeno again, impatient for more kisses. Bruising kisses, hard-earned kisses, the kind that left them suckerpunch dizzy. He grabbed at the bottom of Jeno’s shirt, and he began to pull it off. Jeno helped him the rest of the way, shrugging it off over his head and tossing it to the floor. Renjun regarded him wordlessly, breathlessly. His hand started at Jeno’s collar bone, sliding downwards, stopping at the center of his chest, right over his heart. Exactly where his locket might be, if he was still wearing it. His hand stayed there a long, long time.

Then it went lower, wrestling with Jeno’s belt buckle.

\---

Renjun did not wait. He pulled his clothes back on as if trying to hide inside them.

“Renjun,” Jeno said. To try and catch up, he sat at the edge of the bed, tugging up his pant legs. “Wait a minute.”

He didn’t listen. He was trying to quickly flatten his mussed hair in Jeno’s mirror, and in his reflection, Jeno could see his red cheeks, his fumbling lips, his narrowed eyes that fought against more rising tears.

“Renjun,” Jeno said again. He hurried to him, taking him by the crook of his elbow, trying to turn him so they faced each other. “Hey. Don’t just leave -- let’s talk for a second --”

“You must think you’re really clever,” Renjun snapped, jerking his elbow away. “Getting me into bed with you -- you must think you finally fucking won, huh?” He shouldered his way through to the door. “Fine. You won. I hope you’re fucking happy.”

Jeno’s heart broke for Renjun right then. It had always been Renjun’s heart to break, and now he’d done it, but not through his spiteful games or sharpened words. He broke it simply by being broken himself. Jeno really, truly pitied him.

“I told you before,” Jeno said. “I wasn’t ever trying to win, Renjun. It’s not a fucking game. _Please.”_ He met him at the door, trying one last time to hold onto him. “Don’t do this. Don’t --”

“Fuck you,” Renjun spat, and ran out the door.

\---

Jeno sat in homeroom the next morning. He might have still been worried about what the other kids were saying about him after the letter on the board, but he could not focus on them. All he could think about was the stinging on his shoulder and down his back. Where Renjun had bitten him, drawn his nails down while arching his back against Jeno’s mattress.

He winced. The memory was like the beat of a migraine on his brain. He rubbed his face, and found it feverishly warm.

Renjun walked into the classroom. Jeno had not expected him. He’d thought he would skip today, but perhaps his father had made him go. Regardless, he was clearly not prepared to be there. He moved as if dazed, nearly walking right into the table at the front of the room. His hair was unwashed. He didn’t say hello to any of his friends. He only sat down, then laid his head on his desk, as if he had not slept a wink the night before.

Jeno had not slept, either. He could not sleep in that bed, not while knowing what they’d done there and how badly they’d ruined everything.

The teacher entered at eight o’clock, and class began. Jeno had his notebook open in front of him like always, but did not take any notes. It was as if he could not see the paper in front of him. It flickered in and out of his vision like a mirage. The teacher’s voice did the same thing, present one second, gone the next.

Jeno was jarred into alertness by the ringing of the classroom phone.

Interrupted mid-lecture, the teacher set the book he’d been reading from on the front table, and walked to the phone. He took it from the hook, held it to his ear, and registered what he was told with a look of mild surprise.

“Renjun,” he said.

The boy was so out of it, he didn’t even realize what was happening. It took him several seconds to recognize his own name, and he only responded with a dazed blink.

“Renjun,” the teacher repeated. “Main office.”

The room took on a hushed curiosity, as if everyone were holding their breath.

“What?” Renjun asked.

“They say they have a call for you at the main office. They want you to come down immediately.”

Renjun nodded, and slowly got up from his chair. As he walked across the room, every pair of eyes followed him, desperate to know what was happening. Jeno did not know himself, but the sense of dread that filled the air told him it would be nothing good at all.

Renjun did not return from the main office. His belongings were left at his desk, long after the class period ended.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I like to think my character's best traits are inspired by my idols, while their worst traits are entirely of my creation. In other words, I probably don't have to say this, but please don't take anything from this fic (or ANY fic) as being indicative of the idols' real selves! Immoral Renjun is fun in fiction, but not meant to reflect on our lovely boy!
> 
> in other words don't send me hate mail for this chapter lmao hope i didn't hurt u too bad
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/playing_prince) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/playing_prince)


	8. Renjun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> adding a warning this time for bullying/homophobia, some self-abusive behaviors, and general heartbreak. it's kinda hard to read, but i hope you like it anyway orz

Renjun had been in the hospital waiting room for seven hours.

When he’d first arrived, he’d been so panicked that he’d been pacing up and down the waiting room floor, almost unable to breathe. A nurse had come in and told him to sit, and then asked him if he had any family members who could come and wait with him. He’d told her no. She’d suggested that he go and wait at home instead. Renjun had refused. He wouldn’t leave. It might not have been a good idea for him to be alone at home, anyway. Not after this, after everything that had happened in the past couple of days, compounding and crushing him beneath their weight.

It was the worst he had felt in his entire life.

He’d spent the rest of the afternoon sitting in the waiting room chair. When he’d sat there like that, in the complete silence of that windowless room, his brain had had nothing to do but spiral. He’d think of his dad, then feel like he was going to start crying, so he would try to think of something else, except the only other thing on his mind had been Jeno. He’d remembered, no matter how much he’d tried not to, the feeling of Jeno’s hands. The taste of him. The way, when Renjun had begun to climax, Jeno had pressed his lips to the side of Renjun’s neck, and that had made it even more intense, and Renjun had never known he could feel like that, that Jeno could make him feel so good. The pleasure had echoed and ached long after they’d finished, making his entire body tremble uncontrollably. It had scared him, and he’d pushed Jeno away so he could pull his clothes back on.

When he’d remembered this, Renjun had run to the hospital bathroom, bent over the toilet bowl, and retched. _Disgusting,_ he’d told himself. _Completely disgusting._

He’d wiped his mouth and gotten a drink of water to wash the foul taste away, then returned to his chair in the waiting room. Every time his mind wandered back to Jeno, he would pinch himself hard on the arm. After several hours of this, it was completely red and sore, certain to bruise by the next day. He fingered it now, wincing at the pain, but telling himself that what his father was going through was far worse.

He glanced at the clock. It was six PM. It should have been dinner time, and he was hungry after his stomach being emptied, but he refused to eat. The nurse from earlier came back again, making a show of neatening up the already perfectly straight chairs, just so she could casually ask, “Do you want dinner? There’s a dining area down on the first floor.”

“No,” he said.

“Are you sure? I’m sure your father wouldn’t like you to be starving yourself.”

“You don’t know anything about my father.”

The nurse looked quietly shocked. She left the room again, as if she couldn’t bear to be in it with him.

He sank further down into his chair, preparing for a long night of no sleep. He didn’t want to sleep, anyway. What he really wanted to do was knock over all the chairs the nurse had just straightened and smash the ceiling lights and run out of the hospital into the road. He wanted to make a mess of things, like he always did. He wanted to break everything, as if it might fix him. His fingers twitched against the sleeves of his school blazer, desperately wanting to follow that impulse.

Then, his phone rang.

He dug it from his pocket. It was a number he didn’t recognize. Part of him wanted to just block the call and shut his phone off. But he was also afraid. He’d spent so much of his life being afraid on his own -- lying alone in bed at night while his father was at the bar, wishing he had someone there with him, wishing his mother had still been alive so that the three of them could have been happy. But he didn’t have his mother, and like usual, he didn’t have his father. He wanted to have _someone_.

He answered the phone.

“Hey,” Jeno said. Renjun could hear the hint of surprise in his voice, as though he hadn’t really expected Renjun to answer.

“How did you get my number?”

“Jaemin gave it to me. From the track team group chat.”

Despite the circumstances, Renjun almost laughed. He’d completely forgotten about the group chat. He’d reluctantly joined it on the first day of practice, then had it muted the rest of the semester.

“Are you okay?” Jeno asked. “When you left school this morning and didn’t come back… I was worried, so I stopped at your apartment after school, but no one was there --”

“I’m at the hospital.”

Jeno paused. “Oh my god. Is everything okay?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you want me to come down there?”

“Okay,” Renjun said, barely audible. He was admitting defeat. He didn’t know what else to do. Because if he didn’t have someone there to hold him together in that moment, he knew he was going to self-destruct.

Jeno hung up.

Renjun drew his feet up onto the edge of his chair, and pressed his forehead to his knees.

\---

It took Jeno twenty minutes to get there. When he walked into the waiting room, his hair was damp with sweat and he was out of breath. Renjun guessed he must have biked. Jeno’s eyes found Renjun across the room, and he hurried over to sit beside him. He sat delicately, as if trying not to jar Renjun beside him, as if Renjun was made of glass.

“Hey,” he said. “Are you alright?”

Renjun met Jeno’s eyes, and was disarmed. Jeno had the blackest eyes, ink dark, so dark Renjun could see his reflection in them. They were full of love. They’d been full of love for years, though Renjun had only just realized it. He was transported to yesterday, to when Jeno’s eyes had been locked on his, gaze soft but exhilarated as he’d touched Renjun just the right way to make him beg for more.

Renjun’s hand flew to his arm. He was going to hurt himself again, but restrained himself, with Jeno sitting right there beside him.

“What happened?” Jeno asked gently. “It’s your dad?”

Having to describe it meant having to confront it. Renjun’s voice shook as he explained, “He got hurt at work. He fell when he was tiling a roof and landed on his back.” He sucked in a breath, sharp and cold in his lungs like a knife. “The doctor said it might be broken.”

“Oh no.” Jeno must have seen that Renjun was about to cry. He took Renjun’s hand, as if it hadn’t been years since the last time he’d done it. “That’s terrible… I can’t even imagine… oh my god…”

Renjun still had the underlying impulse to tear his hand out of Jeno’s grasp. But he let it stay there. He was too broken to fight it, too afraid of having nothing to hold on to. Tomorrow, he decided, he would let Jeno go. For now, he would keep him. He would take any comfort he could.

He bowed his head and cried. Jeno watched him silently, soft-faced. His hand began to move against Renjun’s, tracing a letter against his palm.

Renjun shook his head. He didn’t want to play games right now. He was tired of games. He always lost them, and he always ruined them.

Jeno wrote the letter again, gentle but insistent.

“I?” Renjun guessed, the syllable a sob.

“Yeah.”

Jeno drew another letter. Renjun shut his eyes and focused on nothing but the sensation of that touch. He’d railed against it for so long, when it could’ve been the one thing to make him feel safe.

“M?”

“Yeah,” Jeno said again.

He kept drawing. Renjun guessed what it would say, before it was even over.

_I’m sorry._

The tears came faster. How many times had Jeno apologized to him, for something that wasn’t his fault? And Renjun had never told him it was okay. He’d stomped Jeno’s apologies into the ground like they were nothing to him.

That was why Renjun could not keep him. Because the guilt hit him now like a crash, remembering how much sick joy he’d taken in hurting Jeno. All Jeno had ever done was love him, and then apologize for it. Renjun was the one who should have apologized, for loving Jeno. Maybe if he hadn’t loved Jeno, he wouldn’t have ever wanted to hurt him.

Jeno’s hand had stopped moving. He’d accidentally nudged up Renjun’s sleeve with his wrist, and seen the deep red blooming over the skin of his arm where he’d pinched himself.

“What happened?” Jeno asked. “It looks like the beginning of a blood blister.”

Renjun took his hand back and replaced his sleeve. “How long are you staying?” he asked, trying to change the subject.

Jeno noticed his evasiveness, still eyeing Renjun’s arm worriedly, but answered, “As long as you want me to.”

The night was still a few hours off, and would last a long time after. No windows, no slice of sky to track it by. Renjun leaned his head on Jeno’s shoulder, half-wishing it could all be over, half-wishing tomorrow would never come, because he wasn’t ready to face it.

He fell asleep like that, and Jeno did, too, head resting against Renjun’s.

\---

Renjun’s father lay in his bed. He’d been drowsy for the past few days, doped up on painkillers after his surgery. The dosages began to thin, at the doctor’s suggestion. He became aware of his body again, and aware that he could feel hardly anything below his belly button. It took all the strength and ferocity out of him. Renjun felt the way he often did when coaxing his father to bed after one too many beers. Like he was suddenly small. Like he wasn’t six feet tall with a booming voice and a special talent for making Renjun feel completely worthless.

Renjun pitied him. But pity could be dangerous, too.

One week after the accident, Renjun brought his father’s lunch to him on a tray. His father turned his head against his propped pillow and watched Renjun mildly, almost as if admiring him. Renjun set the tray on the bedside table.

“How are you today?” Renjun asked quietly, afraid at the answer.

“The same,” his father answered. “Can’t hardly feel anything, except that it itches where they cut me open.”

“Oh.” The doctor had said there was no chance at a full recovery. The damage had been too great, the fall too far. They had yet to discuss what this meant in the long term. But they both knew that there was no way his father could go back to work. He was bed bound for the foreseeable future. And after that, it was doubtful that he would ever stand on his own again, let alone walk.

Renjun reached to pick up his father’s glass. But his hands were clumsy in his distraction, and he dropped it on the bed’s edge. It splattered across his father’s legs, pooling to the side, dripping onto the floor. Renjun hurried to set the glass back on the table (it toppled, fell over again with a thud) and searched around the room for something to wipe it up with. His father snagged the end of his sleeve.

“Renjun,” he said. “It’s fine.”

Renjun shook his head. He meant to walk away, but his father’s grip made him stumble, stepping into the puddle of water on the floor and soaking his sock.

“It’s fine,” his father said again, more firmly, almost aggressively.

Renjun swayed on his feet. Being in the same room with his father had always been difficult. His father carried a storm cloud wherever he went, and it seemed to expand to fit any space. Its humidity was stifling, making it hard for Renjun to breathe. And it scared him that he never knew when lightning might strike, when his father might raise his voice and shake Renjun’s bones like thunder.

But it was even worse now. Renjun, even though it was not his fault that the accident had happened, felt guilty. What if his father had died? What if he’d died, and they’d still been on bad terms, and his last memory of his son was of how disappointed he was in him?

Renjun wondered how much worse the disappointment would be if his father knew what he and Jeno had done. Men were supposed to be honest, his father had always told him. But if Renjun was honest with him, his father would never want anything to do with him again. And how could Renjun be honest with him anyway, when he’d only just started to be honest with himself?

“Sit down,” his father said. “You look faint.”

Renjun did as he was told, perching on the bed’s edge. He stared down at the comforter, at the edge of the graying patch where the water soaked into it.

They were silent for a moment. Renjun realized he could not remember physically being this close to his father in a very long time. They never ate together or watched TV together. Renjun always shut himself in his room instead. Even when he’d first seen his father again after the surgery, he hadn’t hugged him. He’d just stood at a distance, completely numb.

“I don’t know what we’re going to do,” his father finally said. “I just don’t know, Renjun.”

Renjun swallowed, wringing his hands. His thumb passed over his palm, remembering where Jeno had written across it. Even now, despite knowing better, he longed for that touch. He longed for the comfort of being a child, when he and Jeno had been truly close, when he didn’t have to face a future so uncertain and shaken up.

“What are you thinking?” his father asked.

Renjun closed his fist. _I’m thinking about all the wrong things._ “I don’t know. Just… that I’m scared, I guess.”

For once in his life, his father did not reprimand him. It was okay to be afraid at a time like this, because his father was afraid, too. “I can’t work anymore,” his father said. “I can’t work, but we still have to pay rent and buy food and live.”

“I know.” Renjun knew the subtext, too. He would have to find a job. He would have to find a way to balance school and work and find the time to take care of his dad, too, on top of all of that. What did it mean for him a year down the line? What did it mean for him when it came to college, moving out, living alone?

The emotions drew themselves right over his face. Half-lidded eyes, sinking brows, lips turning in a heart-emptied pout. His father saw it, and took Renjun’s face in both hands.

“Promise me you won’t leave me,” he begged. “It’s always been just the two of us. I don’t have anyone else. You’re the only family I have.”

Those words were true of Renjun, too -- he didn’t have anyone but his father. He did not have Jeno. Not anymore. He realized he was stuck, but really, he’d been stuck for the past five years. He couldn’t go forward, and he certainly couldn’t go back to fix things. 

“Okay,” he said. A couple of bitter tears budded in each eye. They fell over, catching on his father’s thumbs.

“You mean it? You’ll stay with me, even like this?”

“Yeah.” Renjun sniffled, becoming resolute. He straightened his back, squared his shoulders, and raised his chin. He made himself the man his father wanted him to be.

“Good,” his father whispered. “Good. I’m glad.”

The cold of the spilt water reached Renjun’s hand on the mattress, and he recoiled from it. He looked down, seeing where it had consumed a dark swath of the blanket over his father’s legs, and realized that his father could not even feel it.

\---

Renjun took the final week of the spring semester off.

The school seemed to understand. He needed time to readjust. He’d gone in to talk to one of his teachers about catching up on his missed work, and that teacher had placed a hand on Renjun’s back and said, “You must be going through a lot right now. I hope for the best for your father.” It drove Renjun crazy. It made him feel more pitiful than usual.

He got a job at a gas station. He wasn’t allowed to sell cigarettes inside because he was too young, so instead he was relegated to pump attendant duty. He spent much of his day trying to keep himself tucked under the gas pump awning as the summer sun moved above him, shrinking his shade. The people who came through barely acknowledged him as he filled their tanks. One even had the gaul to complain to him about the high gas prices, as if Renjun had any control over them.

He did not like work, but it helped to have an excuse to be out of the apartment over his vacation. He wasn’t sure he could have stood being stuck there with his father everyday. His father had taken to drinking in bed. Renjun would carry in bottles for him, which his father would take as if ashamed, flashing Renjun a sheepish grin. When he couldn’t go to the bar, it made his drinking in excess even more obvious; Renjun had to be responsible for picking up his empties, and he’d begun to count them. Just last night, he’d tossed seven bottles into the recycling. The stench of beer still clung to his father’s bedroom long after they’d been taken care of.

On the other hand, his father did not yell at him so much anymore. He was being especially nice to Renjun, now that Renjun was the one supporting him. Renjun knew he was only being respected now out of necessity. It made him want to toss those beers in his father’s face. But then his father’s reliance on the beer would make Renjun feel sorry for him, and he would remember how his father begged him to stay with him, and Renjun would realize that he was too weak-hearted to ever retaliate. He’d been calling Jeno a coward for ages, when he’d been the biggest coward the whole time.

He hadn’t spoken to Jeno since the night in the hospital. They’d slept in the hospital waiting room until five AM the next morning, when Renjun had woken with red eyes sore from crying and the sound of Jeno’s soft, restful breathing against his ear. He’d realized what had woken him was the opening and closing of the waiting room door, where the doctor and nurse stood, ready to deliver the news. Renjun had shifted, giving them his attention, which had woken Jeno, who blinked sleepily into awareness.

The doctor had explained the situation. Spine damage, lack of mobility, possibly permanent. Renjun had taken it in without even a change in his expression. He’d had a feeling it would be like that. He’d always been a pessimist, and moments like that only served to justify it. It was like a nail being hammered into him, one strike for every painful moment. This one was the final blow, the point of no return.

Renjun had stood. He’d been told he was allowed to see his father. Jeno had stood, too, as if he would come with him, but Renjun had said, “You can go home now.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yeah.” Renjun had rubbed his face, trying to wipe away the last of his drowsiness. He’d wanted Jeno to stay with him, but he’d already made up his mind the night before. This would be the last time. From then on, he would face things on his own. “I’ll be fine. I need to be alone right now.”

Jeno had lingered, like he didn’t believe Renjun, but he’d finally said, “Give me a call if you need me, okay?” and left. He hadn’t seen Renjun shaking his head in response, vowing to himself that he would not call Jeno, no matter how weak he felt without him.

Presently, Renjun sat down on the raised concrete beside the gas pump. He folded his arms over his knees and buried his face in them. He felt as if he was castaway on an island somewhere, lost at sea. It was his fault; he’d tossed his only lifeline into that water and watched it drift away.

A car pulled up towards the pump, and Renjun stood, running the sleeve of his hoodie over his eyes so the customer would not see that he had been about to cry. The car stopped, and the front window rolled down.

“Renjun?”

He placed a hand over his eyes as a visor against the sun as he peered into the dark of the car. Then he startled when he realized it was Jiseok, the boy he’d used to hang around with, who he’d snapped at earlier that year when he’d started asking Renjun questions about Jeno.

“I’ve got enough friends. I don’t need one like you,” had been Renjun’s exact words. In retrospect, it was funny, in a horrible, ironic sort of way. Not one of Renjun’s so-called “friends” had reached out to him since his father’s accident, at the time when he could have used a friend most. Maybe Jiseok was someone he should have kept around. But Renjun had the feeling he was just as fake as the rest of them.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Jiseok asked him, leaning over from where he sat in the passenger’s seat. The person driving must have been his older brother, Renjun thought, who wore a matching smirk, arm perched coolly over the rolled-down window. “Don’t tell me you work here.”

Renjun’s face went red with embarrassment. “So what if I do?”

Jiseok ran his tongue over his teeth, as if relishing the moment. “What, your dad’s too poor to pay rent on his own, now? Now I know why you never invited any of us over. Your place is probably a fucking shithole.”

Renjun stared down at his beat-up sneakers. The last of his friends he’d ever had over to his house was Jeno, all those years ago -- Jeno had been the only person he’d even trusted enough to show it to. He didn’t want his high school friends to see the apartment, and even more than that, he didn’t want them to meet his dad. His dad had a habit of humiliating him in front of other people, and Renjun was sure if he did it in front of someone like Jiseok, he wouldn’t have heard the end of it for days, through subtle needling passed off as friendly banter.

Renjun wanted to argue back, but he didn’t want to get fired. He put on the friendliest face he could muster, gestured to the pump, and asked, “What can I get you?”

Jiseok threw his head back in a laugh. “What a joke.”

“This is the kid you used to hang around with?” Jiseok’s brother asked snidely. 

“Yeah. Before I realized he was such a fucking loser.” Jiseok knelt in his seat, and held his phone out towards the window, snapping a photo before Renjun could even move. “There. The kids at school should think that’s pretty funny.”

Renjun didn’t look up. He fingered the zipper of his windbreaker, with the gas station logo on the breast. He wished he could disappear right then. He was humiliated.

Jiseok and his brother pulled out of the parking lot without buying anything. Renjun wondered if they’d only pulled in because they’d seen him there, and wanted to make fun of him.

Renjun sat back down on the concrete, not wanting to be there, and not wanting to be home, either.

\---

Renjun sat at his desk, staring at the empty chair in front of him. It was the first day of the fall semester, the final semester before graduation, which should have been a relief, but Renjun could only wonder what he would do when it was all over. He’d applied to a handful of colleges, and was confident that he would get in to most of them, but if he did, it would mean moving to another town and losing half his day to classes. Scheduling work around it would be difficult. How would he afford to take care of things then?

A hand fell on his shoulder, and Renjun jumped. It was Wonjae, followed by two other boys, who settled around Renjun in a circle. “Hey,” Wonjae said. “How was your break?”

Renjun let out a low sigh. He wasn’t in the mood to talk. “Fine,” he responded gruffly, trying to make himself look busy by thumbing through the pages of his textbook.

“Making bank?”

Renjun froze. “What, did Jiseok say something to you?”

Wonjae realized that Renjun was not amused, and played it off with an uncomfortable laugh. “Well, uh, he did say something about it. But hey. I kinda wish I could get a job. A little spending money would be nice.”

Renjun could imagine the scenario in his head: Jiseok telling Wonjae all about his findings in a hushed but delighted voice, Wonjae smirking as if it was hilarious. All the boys laughing at the image of Renjun working defeatedly at the gas pump, then turning around just a few minutes later and acting like his friend. This was how it always happened. Renjun had even participated himself sometimes, saying nasty things behind a friend’s back and then smiling to his face later that same day.

He was sick of that cycle. He said, “It’s not spending money. My dad was injured and now he can’t work, so I have to do it myself, or else we won’t be able to make rent and we’ll be evicted. There isn’t anything nice about it.”

All the boys went quiet.

“Oh,” Wonjae said. “Sorry.” His eyes flickered uncertainly around, as if searching his head for something else to change the subject to so they could escape the awkward silence. Just then, the perfect subject wandered in the classroom door. Wonjae watched Jeno walk to his desk, leaned further into the circle, and whispered, “God. If I was him, I’d be too embarrassed to show up.”

“Must be even worse for Renjun,” one of the other boys snickered, “having his secret admirer in the same homeroom.” He nudged Renjun’s arm with his fist. “I’d watch out, in case he tries to lay one on you.”

They were talking about the letter. It seemed that even their two weeks of summer break had not been enough to kill the gossip. Renjun wondered how much of it Jeno heard. He must have at least known that people were still talking about him -- the boys in their class didn’t try very hard to be subtle about it.

Renjun swallowed back the sickness he felt crawling up his throat. He forced a straight face.

“Fucking gross,” Wonjae said. “You know what we should do? Tomorrow, before anyone gets here -- we should write his letter out on the chalkboard.” He grinned devilishly, overjoyed at his own cleverness. “Then when he walks in, he’ll see it: ‘And yes, I still have feelings for you--’”

“Stop it,” Renjun snapped. “Just shut up.”

It was loud enough that not just Wonjae froze, but every student in the room. Jeno watched from his desk, lips parted curiously.

“You were the one that put that letter up in the first place,” Wonjae reasoned quietly, trying to de-escalate. “Why’s it such a big deal?”

“It’s old news. I’m sick of hearing about it.” He regretted ever putting that letter up. It had gotten to the point that he thought about it every night as he lay in bed, remembering the horrified look on Jeno’s face as he’d seen it pinned to the bulletin board. What had he been thinking, when he’d put it up? Why had he been so keen to embarrass Jeno like that, in front of the whole school? It was the cruelest thing he’d ever done, aside from when he’d broken Jeno’s heart in the first place. “Don’t talk to me about it again.”

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Wonjae hissed. “I guess Jiseok was right. You’ve turned into a huge asshole. You can’t even take a joke.”

Renjun stood, chair screeching. He could see now that every face in the class was turned towards him. Nervously, he made for the empty space between the desks so that he could slip through, but Wonjae stepped in his way.

“Move,” Renjun said.

“You’re being ridiculous. I just want to talk to you.”

Renjun covered up his nervousness, becoming the cool, hard boy he always pretended to be. “And I already told you to shut up. Get the hell out of my way.”

“Or what?” Wonjae shoved his hands in his pockets and leaned in. He was taller than Renjun, and seemed to stand over him, gaze menacing. 

Renjun pushed past him, their shoulders bumping. Wonjae grabbed him by the collar of his blazer, yanking him hard so that he reeled back around. The other students gasped in unison. One girl stood, like she was considering running out into the hall to find a teacher. Renjun tried to pull away, but Wonjae moved forward, pinning him against the desk.

A hand appeared on top of Wonjae’s hand, and Renjun blinked to see Jeno standing beside them, trying to pry Renjun’s shirt out of Wonjae’s grip. “Let him go,” he said firmly.

Wonjae seemed almost afraid, as if he’d met his match. Refusing to show that fear in front of the class, he relinquished Renjun and raised his hands, saying, “I was only messing around. Why don’t you mind your own business?”

Jeno ignored the bait, and instead put his arm around Renjun’s shoulders to guide him towards the door. “Let’s go.”

“Renjun,” Wonjae called after them. “Lucky your boyfriend was here to save you, huh?”

The breath seemed to have been sucked out of the room. No one moved except Renjun, who threw off Jeno’s arm and ran to the exit, heart thumping so hard it hit his ribs like a punch. He hated Wonjae and the rest of his friends nearly as much as he hated himself.

He turned the hallway corner, out of sight of the classroom, then pressed himself to the wall. The bell rang, signaling that first period was about to start. He ignored it. He couldn’t go back in that classroom, otherwise he might suffocate.

“Renjun.” Jeno rushed around the corner, having followed him there. “Hey. Are you okay?”

Renjun didn’t understand why Jeno still cared for him. What had he ever done to earn that affection? Hadn’t he realized, after all the suffering Renjun had put him through, that Renjun was not someone worth caring about about? But he was still here, jumping into the middle of a fight to protect him, checking in on him after to see if he was alright.

Renjun couldn’t stand it. He didn’t deserve Jeno’s worry, or his love.

“Wonjae was right,” he said, voice hoarse. “It wasn’t any of your business. You should have stayed out of it.”

“I was only trying to help you,” Jeno responded weakly.

“I know. But I don’t want your help. I just want you to leave me alone.”

Something unspoken still hung in the air. There was a flash where Renjun relived it: Jeno’s body warm against his, the desperate kisses, the neediness and the emptiness inside of Renjun that Jeno had filled, until he’d pushed it away. They looked at each other now, and Renjun could tell from the anguish in Jeno’s eyes that he was reliving the same thing, and that he wanted to say, _what about that day, what about the way you kissed me, what about what could be, if you’d let it happen?_

“It’s over,” Renjun finally said. “It’s done. I won’t bother you like I used to. And I don’t want you to talk to me, either. Okay? It’s _done._ ” He repeated it so that there was no mistake about it, either from Jeno or himself. He was drawing a line, and he knew he would have to remind himself every day not to cross it. But it was the only thing he could do.

Jeno looked so hurt, that Renjun winced at the sight of him. Maybe he’d still been holding on to a little bit of hope after they’d had sex, and after Renjun had leaned on his shoulder in the hospital room. Renjun felt awful about crushing that hope, but he had to do it, for Jeno’s sake.

“Okay,” Jeno murmured.

Renjun straightened the front of his shirt and blazer where it was still ruffled and displaced, and walked briskly away down the hall.

\---

Jeno kept his word, at least for a little while. He did not speak to Renjun again for weeks.

At school, they didn’t look at each other. They didn’t acknowledge each other, even on an occasion where Renjun had bumped into Jeno in the hall; he’d simply pretended as if Jeno were a wall, and continued on his way.

Renjun did not talk to his friends anymore, either. A couple had made an attempt, and whenever they did, he’d gotten up and left for the bathroom. After a few instances of this, they’d seemed to have gotten the message. He still heard them talking about him behind his back, but didn’t care. He ate alone in the cafeteria, sitting at the far end of a table half-filled by strangers. Occasionally, Renjun could go the entire school day without speaking to another person, even a teacher. It was becoming his specialty.

The only person he talked to anymore was his father. He’d become almost thankful for his new job, which granted him a few blissful hours of solitude in the evenings. But then he would eventually have to come back, and he would have to walk into his father’s room, and deal with whatever it was he found there. His father was still cloyingly nice to him, though it was beginning to slip. Renjun knew that once the newness of the situation faded, things would return to business as usual. He could already see the hints: the bottles stacking higher; the deepening frown on his father’s face that exaggerated his wrinkles; the way he would sometimes ignore Renjun when he spoke, in favor of listening to his TV, which now played most of the day.

It was the first week in September when Renjun had a complete day-off -- no school, no work. This might have seemed a blessing to most people, but he couldn’t stand the thought of being stuck with his father all day, so instead he told him he was going to the store to get groceries. As Renjun walked to the bus stop, he decided he would make this shopping trip last as long as possible. If he really slowballed it, maybe he could have three hours to himself, not much, but enough to clear his head.

He sat at the stop and pulled the wad of cash from his pocket. He counted it, trying to decide which items were a necessity and which could wait until next week, because he’d already spent half his last paycheck on that month’s rent, in combination with his father’s unemployment check. He thought rice and eggs should be at the top of the list, and though he’d wanted to pick up some beef, he thought it might be too expensive, and he wasn’t sure he knew how to cook it well anyway --

There was the shuffling of sneakers against sidewalk. Renjun looked up to see Jeno approaching the bus stop, earbuds in, staring down at his phone. When he put it back in his pocket, he finally noticed Renjun sitting there on the bench, and his mouth opened wordlessly, like he was considering speaking, but remembered their last conversation and thought better of it. Then he pivoted, like he thought he might turn around and go home to avoid the awkwardness of the two of them having to wait at the stop together, but ultimately decided to stay there. Just like at school, they didn’t acknowledge each other. Jeno pressed an earbud further into his ear. Renjun kept counting his bills.

A strong gust of wind blew in. It buffeted into Renjun, powerful enough that it tore the bills from his hand and scattered them over the concrete, skidding around in a tiny spiral. Jeno thoughtlessly stooped to pick them up, because of course he did, because Jeno was so kind and polite that it was his first impulse. He was closer to Renjun now, just a foot or two away, crouching on one knee with his head bowed as he gathered them. It was too close for them to withstand their put-on silence; Renjun shifted to join Jeno in retrieving the money, but Jeno said, “It’s okay, I’ve got it.” He snapped the last one up, straightening them into a stack, and added as casually as he could manage, “Um. Where are you headed?”

As he looked down at Jeno in front of him, picking up after him on his knees, he could only think of the time he’d broken the glasses at Jeno’s house. The way he’d spoken to him and controlled him. The way he’d exploited Jeno’s affection, not even knowing he was doing it, because he’d wanted to make Jeno miserable.

Renjun felt suddenly dizzy, like the bench was swaying beneath him. He ran his hand over the face, trying to bring himself back to his senses, but that hand was trembling. He breathed, and couldn’t get enough air.

Jeno still crouched, bills in hand, looking up at him. “Renjun?”

He couldn’t stand it. He ran away, back towards his apartment, not caring about the money he’d left behind. He ran as fast as he could, storming up the creaky metal stairs, shoving his apartment door open so hard that it banged against the wall. Quickly, he slammed it shut, leaning against it with his back, then sliding down until he sat on the kitchen floor, face buried in his hands. He heard his father call his name from his bedroom, but didn’t respond.

He sat against the door for several minutes, waiting for the world to stop racing around him and for his heartbeat to calm. It didn’t do much good. He thought maybe he would be stuck this way forever, like it was his punishment.

There was a knock. He felt it vibrate through the door.

“Renjun,” Jeno said.

Renjun pressed his palms over his ears.

“You’re there, aren’t you? I just…”

He couldn’t block Jeno out, no matter how hard he tried. He could still hear him and the desperation in his voice.

There was more quiet, like Jeno was debating what to say. Renjun imagined the look on his face, then regretted it, because all he could see was the heartbroken Jeno of the day he’d charged out of his house and spat _fuck you_ right in his face.

Renjun could hear the buzzing of the refrigerator, the slight push of the wind at the bottom of the doorframe, slipping in through the crack.

“I love you,” Jeno said softly, painfully, like it was a plea and a last resort.

Renjun couldn’t stop the tears. They spilled for what felt like the hundredth time over the past couple months, and he hated that he wasn’t strong enough to fight them. He ran to his bedroom and flung open his desk drawer. Jeno’s locket still sat on top of his sketchbook, and it caught the light from the window above Renjun’s desk, its gold shining white. Renjun carried it with him back to the door, opening it to see Jeno still standing there, shocked at Renjun’s sudden reappearance.

“I told you it was over,” Renjun snapped. “I told you. But you never fucking leave me alone. It won’t work out, Jeno.” A tear dripped from his chin to the doorstep, landing a few inches from the toe of Jeno’s shoe. “You want to know why? Because I’ll never be able to stop beating myself up over what I did. You can tell me it doesn’t matter and that you love me anyway, but you _shouldn’t_ love me.” A sob broke through his onslaught, tearing up his throat and leaving it tender. More delicately, voice wavering, he went on, “You couldn’t ever hold me or kiss me without me thinking about how I abandoned you for Yerim -- or how I posted that letter on the board -- or how I took _this --”_ He held the locket up, its chain shaking in his grip. “I couldn’t be with you, because I’d only feel sick to my stomach all the time over how sorry I am, and I could never say sorry enough times to make it up to you. So that’s why it won’t work, Jeno. I fucked it up.”

Jeno shook his head. His eyes were glistening, and Renjun realized _he_ was on the verge of crying, too. “I would forgive you, Renjun. Really. I want to be with you, and I don’t care if --”

“Don’t,” Renjun warned. “Don’t forgive me. I don’t deserve it.” He balled up the locket in his fist, and threw it at Jeno. It smacked his chest, then fell onto the ground with a clatter. “Take this back. I don’t want it anymore.” Then he turned back around and slammed the door shut.

He felt dizzy again. He stumbled into his room and found himself confronted by the rows of glass-covered insects along the back wall. What a useless way he’d spent half his life. He’d thought he could make those stupid little bugs last forever; but the important things, the things that really mattered, he’d always ruined before they even had a chance to be beautiful.

First, Renjun took the frame with the blue, torn-winged butterfly that had landed on his lapel at the park. He traced his thumb over the glass, committing it to memory, before he raised it and threw it onto his floor. It shattered into pieces, and Renjun remembered the photo at Jeno’s house, the one he’d broken the same way. He couldn’t forgive himself. He took the next frame down, and the next, and slammed them down onto his bedroom floor, making a mess, like he always, always did.

\---

When he opened the front door the next morning, Jeno’s locket still sat coiled on the step, unwanted.

Renjun allowed himself a moment of weakness, and took it back inside.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

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	9. Jeno

Jeno stood in front of his mother’s grave. He and his father had bought some chrysanthemums to place on it, yellow-orange ones with double blossoms. They wavered in the early October breeze, like the flicker of a candle flame.

They had decided to visit more often now. They’d been off of it for a while, Jeno caught up in schoolwork and college applications, his father caught up in his job. Now they’d decided to visit at least once a month, more if they could manage. It wasn’t all about paying their respects, though that was part of it. It was also about having a peaceful day they could spend together away from town. Here, the hills stretched around the cemetery for miles. Trees dotted them as solitary pillars, raised like headstones among fields of brilliantly waning wildflowers. Jeno and his father always brought a blanket and a lunch so they could picnic in the shade.

It was beginning to get cold. Jeno was wearing his autumn jacket, and buttoned it to the collar as they settled beneath a big oak tree beside the cemetery. When he sat on their blanket, he could hear the freshly-fallen leaves crinkling under it. Otherwise, it was meaningfully silent. Usually their visits at his mother’s grave were happy in a blurry, bittersweet kind of way. This time, there was a tension being ignored.

Jeno’s father opened the boxed lunch he’d brought in the middle of the blanket. It was home-cooked, carefully arranged with patient love. It smelled delicious, but Jeno knew he wouldn’t be able to stomach it unless they talked first.

“Dad.”

His father gave a small smile that meant he had expected this. “Is this about school?”

“Yeah.” Jeno ran his fingers over the grass at the edge of the blanket. They grazed the leaf of a clover, which bobbled at the disturbance.

Jeno had finally gotten word back from all the colleges he’d applied to. He’d gotten into every single one, including his first choice in Seoul. He should have been happy about it, but it was difficult to be happy over anything lately. Graduating high school was not a relief. He could not cast it off. He felt like it would follow him around the rest of his life.

“You should go,” his father said.

“It’s almost four hours away.” Jeno’s fingers tightened into the grass, tugging up dirt. “If I went to Seoul, I’d have to live on-campus. Going back and forth every weekend just wouldn’t be practical.” In a murmur, he added, “It just wouldn’t be worth it.”

“We could make it work.”

Jeno shook his head. “I can’t leave you here all alone.” He kept imagining it. His father, the only person in their too-big house, surrounded by pictures of his wife and son but separated from both of them. It was too cruel.

“I wouldn’t be alone,” his father said firmly. “I have friends and coworkers. I don’t want you to sacrifice an opportunity like this because of me. I’ll be just fine.”

“But --”

“I mean it. You can’t throw it away because of me. I wouldn’t be able to forgive myself if you did.” The breeze stirred again, lifting Jeno’s father’s hair. It was still dark, but woven with gray. He wasn’t old, but he was on the verge of it, and Jeno had never really thought of him that way, until now. It made the thought of leaving even harder to bear. “You’ve always wanted to go to a good college. So we’ll find a way to make it happen.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I am.” His father gave a small, hopeful grin as he reached into his pant pocket. “By the way, I got you an early graduation gift. Close your eyes.”

Jeno did. He could hear the gentle rustle of the grass, the distant chirp of a bird, and then a metal clinking. His father pressed something into his hand, cool and hard-edged and just large enough to fit perfectly in his palm. He opened his eyes and looked down to see that it was his father’s car key, scratched and worn from time, but still able to capture the sun’s glimmer along its flat side.

Jeno’s mouth opened before he had words to fill it. He scrambled to find them. “Dad -- you don’t have to do something like that.”

“I want to. Besides, I’ve been thinking about getting a new car for a while. So as long as you’re okay with my hand-me-down --” He closed Jeno’s fingers around it. “-- it’s all yours.”

“Of course I’m okay with a hand-me-down,” Jeno assured him. He still wanted to give the key back. It was too grand a gift. But he could see his father would not budge on it. He ran his thumb over the key’s bow, still not quite feeling like it belonged to him.

“Good. Before you graduate, we’ll work on your driving, so you can get your license before college. Then, you’ll be able to drive back and forth whenever you want.”

Jeno shut his eyes again. He felt as though he was about to start crying. Relieved, soundless tears. The wind blew in and dried them before they broke the surface.

“Dad,” Jeno said. “I want to tell you some stuff.”

“What?” His father adjusted his glasses, trying to see Jeno clearer to read the expression on his face. “Is it bad news?”

“No,” Jeno said. “Just some stuff I’ve been thinking about lately.”

His father placed his hands in his lap, patient, listening, as if they had all the time in the world.

\---

Jeno and Renjun kept their distance. Jeno had decided he would not cross that line again. It was like being transported back in time, to before Renjun had noticed the chain of Jeno’s locket, when they’d ignored each other for five years. They were strangers again.

It was just as difficult this time around as it had been the first time. Jeno sometimes found his eyes drifting across the classroom to Renjun’s seat, but then he would check himself and tear his gaze away. If he was going to move on, he would have to be strict with himself. And he was not so delusional as to think that there was anything to do _except_ move on. Hadn’t that been the entire point of the locket in the first place?

He remembered the way Renjun had talked about his insects when they were children. _Don’t you think beautiful things ought to last forever?_ Renjun had asked him. Jeno had always wondered if Renjun had seen the cruel irony of it. To make those beautiful things last, he’d had to kill them. He’d drowned those insects in alcohol and pierced them with pins.

Jeno had always thought of his love in the same way. Their relationship was dead, but maybe it was better like that. Jeno could always keep those precious memories. He could always love the Renjun of his childhood, even if he couldn’t love the Renjun of now. He could keep the token of that love inside his locket and preserve it forever. If he’d tampered with that love -- if he’d tried to get close to Renjun again, if he’d tried to make that love real -- it would inevitably fall apart. Some loves deserved to be shelved and appreciated as framed photographs, not lived or pursued. He’d known that, but then Renjun had kissed him, and he’d lost all self-restraint. Now, that love was ruined. He hadn’t been able to make it last forever.

It didn’t hurt as badly as Jeno had thought. There was almost a relief in it, that they’d ruined things so badly there was no chance of them making the same mistake again. When they passed each other in the halls, Jeno’s heart didn’t thump. He didn’t look away. He forced himself through it and found that it became easier everyday to just be normal.

They spoke to each other for the first time in months that December. Graduation was creeping up on them. Jeno had committed to the university in Seoul. He did not know what Renjun’s plans were. At the end of gym class, through sheer coincidence, their teacher selected the two of them to help take down the volleyball nets and bring them to the equipment closet. Jeno gave Renjun an awkward, closed-lip smile as he stood at one of the poles, beginning to untie the net’s string as Renjun did the other end.

“How are you?” Jeno asked tentatively.

“Alright.”

“Is your dad doing okay?”

“Mm-hmm.” It sounded like a lie, like a dodge.

“That’s good,” Jeno said anyway. His end of the net dropped, and he began to fold it towards Renjun. “Where did you end up enrolling next year?”

“I’m not going to college.”

Jeno paused, halfway between the two poles. Renjun had always wanted to go to college. When they were twelve years old, they’d even decided they would go to college together in the city. Renjun would major in fine arts and Jeno would major in political science, and then when they were grown-ups they would have their respective art studio and law firm right next door to each other. It was a silly fantasy, but they’d really believed it was possible. Renjun had drawn pictures of it, their side-by-side houses, and Jeno had researched to find what schools offered both the majors they’d wanted, and they’d stuck their findings up on the tackboard above Jeno’s desk. It had been a promise. Now, Jeno wasn’t sure where those drawings had ended up.

“Why not?” Jeno asked, voice high with disbelief.

“I can’t. I have to work and take care of my dad.” Renjun’s face did not change, as if it did not matter to him at all. It must have, Jeno thought -- it must have been a hard fact to come to terms with. But it seemed Renjun had become numb to it.

Renjun gathered his end of the net, then took the remainder out of Jeno’s hands. He carried it alone to the equipment closet, and Jeno watched him from a distance, wondering what had happened to the boy he’d known, or if he’d ever really known the real Renjun in the first place.

Maybe that, Jeno finally decided, was why his love had not been enough.

\---

Jeno sat in the rows of folding chairs in front of the auditorium stage. He gripped his diploma in his hands, tilting it beneath the ceiling lights so that his high school’s crest shimmered gold beneath them. It didn’t feel real in his hands. It didn’t feel real that this was the last time he would wear his uniform. He ran his fingers over his blazer lapels, his tie, as if he was saying goodbye.

When the school president finished speaking, the students finally stood, breaking out into a happy chatter and taking last day photos with each other. Jeno craned his head towards the back to see his father standing with his camera, having recorded the whole ceremony, waving his free hand so enthusiastically he nearly whacked the woman seated beside him in the face. Jeno bounded over to him, pushing through the milling crowd.

“Hey,” his father said, pulling him into a one-armed hug. “How’s it feel to be a high school graduate?”

“The same as it felt to not be.”

“Might take a while to sink in.” His father checked his camera. “I got some good footage. I’ll send it to Grandma tonight. Expect a long phone call from her after.” He retrieved his coat from the back of his chair. “About ready to go?”

“Oh -- yeah.” Jeno peered once more around the auditorium, searching. He could not see Renjun anywhere, which he tried not to be disappointed by. He’d probably hurried out as soon as it was over. But he did see Jaemin, standing at the side of the room with a couple boys from the track team.

“I’ll just be a minute,” Jeno told his father. “I’ll meet you at the car, okay?”

A few minutes later, he and Jaemin were sitting in the empty quiet of the hallway staircase, away from the noisy auditorium. Jeno craned his head back, staring up two more floors to the distant ceiling. He’d never really looked at it like this. He wondered how many other places in his school still were unfamiliar to him, even on his very last day.

“You must be excited,” Jaemin said. His voice echoed up the stairwell. “Moving to the big city.”

Jeno was, though not as much as Jaemin probably thought. “I guess so. It’ll be a big change. I don’t really know if I’m ready for it.”

“I’m jealous.” Jaemin flipped his diploma open carelessly, the waxy paper that protected it nearly falling out and fluttering down the stairs. He would be studying psychology at a local college, so he could still live at home. “Mr. Big Shot, living in Seoul, playing on the baseball team at a prestigious university.”

“You say it like that,” Jeno said, “but it doesn’t feel like an accomplishment.”

“What do you mean?”

“I don’t know.” The words echoed back to him, wavering. “It just feels empty.”

“Because you don’t have him,” Jaemin suggested.

Jeno had to wince at the incisiveness. “Yeah.” He rubbed his arm, as if nursing a sore spot from a shot. “That might be it.”

Jaemin snapped his diploma shut. The force of it blew a little dust from the step they sat on. “By the way. I’d been meaning to ask -- whatever happened to your locket? You stopped wearing it.”

For the first time in a long time, Jeno’s hand flew to his chest. He had finally begun to get used to the locket not laying there. It had taken a lot of practice to train himself out of it, to stop himself whenever he had the urge to toy with its chain or twist the pendant between his fingers. For years, it had been like his security blanket. He’d felt naked without it. And when Renjun had thrown it back in his face a few months ago, it had taken all his self-control to leave it behind.

“Renjun took it,” Jeno answered.

“Huh?” Jaemin said incredulously. “ _Took_ it?”

“He literally stole it.”

They were both silent for a moment, and then broke out into simultaneous laughter. It sounded so absurd when he admitted it out loud. Jeno leaned his head on Jaemin’s shoulder, feeling it vibrate with giggles.

“You know,” Jaemin said. “That sounds exactly like him. I can almost picture it.”

“Yeah. Makes it kinda hard to love him sometimes, though.”

“So it was his picture inside it, then?”

“Yeah,” Jeno confessed. “Though if I’d known the kind of trouble it might cause, I wouldn’t have done it. Wouldn’t have even bought that stupid locket in the first place.”

Jaemin shook his head. “That’s not true. You’re too sentimental. But I don’t really think that’s a bad thing.”

“Hmm.” Jeno breathed a sigh against the front of Jaemin’s blazer. It was a moment of comfort among the chaos and college rush. Jeno realized that moments of comfort were easier to come by lately -- sitting with his father by the cemetery, and now in the stairwell, resting his head on his best friend’s shoulder. He took it as a good sign, that perhaps all these changes were doing him well.

“Are you going to get the locket back from him?” Jaemin asked.

“No. It seems pointless.”

Jaemin tutted softly between his teeth. “Really? It always seemed to me that the locket itself was more important to you than whatever was inside it.”

Jeno raised his head. He wasn’t sure he entirely knew what Jaemin meant by it. To him, the locket and Renjun had always been the same, the former simply being a replacement for the latter which he could not have. But maybe it had meant something different, and he just hadn’t known it. A memory could be greater than the sum of its parts. You could love it long after the person inside it was no longer worth loving.

Jaemin stood and stretched, leaning against the stair rail. “Your dad’s waiting, isn’t he?”

“Yeah.”

“Then you ought to get going. We can talk later.” Jaemin walked down to the bottom step, backlit by the cold February sun through the hallway window. “You weren’t planning on abandoning me once you went to Seoul, were you, Mr. Big Shot?”

Jeno smiled. “Of course not.”

“Texts, phone calls, hanging out over breaks --” Jaemin pointed a firm finger in Jeno’s direction. “All are non-optional.”

“Got it, captain.”

“Good.” Jaemin waved lazily over his shoulder, the same way he’d done at the end of every school day, as if this was not the last one. “See you later,” he said, like it was a guarantee, and Jeno was glad to have a friend he would not have to let go of.

\---

The last box had been dropped off in Jeno’s dorm room. His father would not be able to stay longer; he had to work tomorrow, so the drive back had to be made that night. They stood out in the parking lot, where their cars were parked beside each other, willing the day to last just a little bit longer.

“You double-checked that you have absolutely everything, right?” Jeno’s father asked. “Toothbrush, wallet, laptop cord?”

“All up there.”

“What about your ID?”

Jeno tugged at the lanyard around his neck. “Right in front of you.”

“Good, good,” his father murmured. “You sure you’ll be okay tomorrow for orientation?”

“I can assure you that I will be completely fine.” Jeno wasn’t trying to kick his dad out, but the longer he lingered, the harder Jeno knew it would be when he finally left. It was better to rip it off like a bandaid, sharp and quick. “You’ve got a long drive back. You ought to get started, okay?”

His father sighed, but opened his door and slipped into the driver’s seat. The engine roared, and the window rolled down. “Call me tonight after you have dinner.”

“Will do.”

“Don’t lie and say you ate if you didn’t. Take care of yourself. Pay attention in class. If someone offers you drugs, say no.”

Jeno laughed. “You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Boys are dogs. Don’t fall for their tricks. Make sure to use protection.”

“ _Oh my god,_ Dad, _please_.”

“Sorry. I’m just anxious.” His father gripped the steering wheel white-knuckled, as if for dear life. “I’m really gonna miss you, you know.”

“Yeah. I’ll miss you too.” Jeno leaned his arms on the empty window, ducking his head inside. “Make sure to feed Bongsik. And yourself. And remember that I’ll come back and visit soon.”

His father nodded. Jeno leaned all the way in to give him a hug, then stepped away from the car, far enough that he hoped his father wouldn’t see the tears budding in his eyes. His father pulled out, very slowly, and waved goodbye as he turned down the parking lot towards the street.

Jeno felt his phone buzz in his pocket. He checked it to find a text from his roommate he’d just met that morning.

_hey, i’m gonna go for a walk on campus and maybe get a smoothie or something. wanna come?_

Jeno rubbed the tears away and hurriedly typed a response. He couldn’t let his homesickness ruin his first day. If he was going to survive at all, that meant leaving things behind. His dad, his cat, his house. Renjun.

 _One step at a time,_ he told himself. He lingered a few seconds longer in the parking lot, saying a little prayer that his dad would make it home safely, then began to walk back towards his dorm.

\---

Jeno’s first college party was about a month into the semester. He’d been invited to a few earlier by some of the upperclassmen, but had rejected the offers. He’d never really been interested in parties (including during high school, where he’d skipped pretty much all the baseball team’s get-togethers), and wasn’t very interested in drinking, either. Jaemin had liked to call him a Goody-Two-Shoes, but it wasn’t as if Jeno had anyone to impress. His father had always said he was allowed to party and drink, so long as he was responsible. And that was exactly the reason he never did it -- he was afraid of becoming irresponsible. People usually drank to lose their inhibitions, but Jeno liked to stay in control.

He only decided to go after stalling for so long because someone told him that parties were the best way to meet new people. He wouldn’t admit it to his father on the phone, but he was having a hard time making new friends at school. It reminded him of the time after he’d lost Renjun and Yerim, stranded at sea without his two best friends. He didn’t want to face that loneliness again. It was the thing he was most afraid of.

He walked in the front door of the apartment he’d been invited to and was met by color-changing string lights and the murky puff of a vape in the corner. Voices overlaid music in a dull hum, almost a drone. A circle of kids sat on the living room floor, playing a drinking game. Jeno looked around to try and find the upperclassman who had invited him, except he was nowhere to be seen. _Great_ , Jeno thought. _The only person here I know, inexplicably missing._

He backed up towards the door, hoping he would be able to slip back out without being noticed. Then the door opened, and he bumped right into another posse of partygoers, who raised their eyebrows at him as if they could smell the freshman on him. Red-faced, Jeno escaped through the living room towards the kitchen.

It was crowded in there, too, though not as badly. He found a corner by the bowl of corn chips and claimed it. That was a good strategy, right? Everyone would want to eat at some point. If they approached the snacks, he could swoop in and start up a conversation. He grabbed a handful of chips from the bowl and began to nibble at them. When he turned back around, he saw a couple making out against the opposite counter. The boy’s hands were tucked into the back pockets of the girl’s jeans, doing God knows what. Jeno whipped back the other way and found himself facing the wall.

There was a cold wetness on his arm.

“Hey,” said a voice beside him. “Do you want a beer?”

It was a boy with sharp eyes and short hair. His bangs were ruffled above his round brows, sticking up from his forehead.

“Oh.” Jeno wiped the condensation from the bottle off his arm, then took the beer by its neck, glass slippery between his fingers. “I -- I guess so. Yeah. Thanks.”

“I haven’t seen you around before,” the boy said. “What’s your name?”

“Jeno. I’m a freshman.”

“Ah. I see.” The boy took a sip from his own beer. When he swallowed, Jeno watched it move down his throat, making his Adam’s apple bobble. “I’m Mark. Did you come here alone or something?”

“Not on purpose.”

Mark laughed, and Jeno thought it sounded like a little hiccup, high and thin and bubbly. It made Jeno feel safe. He twisted the cap of his beer and took a sip, its gentle fizz warming his belly.

More of Mark’s laugh, more sips. The color-changing lights that hit the walls seemed to grow dimmer and stretch themselves out. As the night went on, people were becoming more daring. Voices were getting louder. A girl in the living room had stripped out of her shirt and a boy had splashed his beer down the front of her chest, and a loud cheer erupted from the other partygoers and hit the ceiling. Jeno placed a hand over one of his ears, trying to block them out so that he could still hear what Mark was saying. He’d been talking about how different Korea was from Canada and how much he missed home, and it was kind of a personal thing to tell a stranger, but that only endeared him to Jeno more. Jeno liked to watch his mouth when he spoke, even when he lost track of the words, eyes fixed on the one corner of Mark’s mouth that was permanently lifted in a lopsided smile.

“Hey,” Mark shouted, breaking above the racket. “Do you want to go somewhere quieter? I can’t really hear anything.”

“Yeah,” Jeno agreed. He waited for Mark to move first, and followed him down the hall to where a glass door opened onto a small balcony. Its rails were made of white concrete, with an unfitting amount of ornament for a shitty college apartment. Mark slid down in front of the balusters, sticking his legs between them so that they dangled down over the sparse yard below them. Jeno did the same thing, putting his arm through the bars, tilting his near-empty beer bottle in late-sunset light so that it glowed.

“So what do you think?” Mark asked. “Of the party.”

“It’s overwhelming,” Jeno said. “I don’t think they’re really my thing.”

Mark nodded in agreement. “They can get kind of crazy sometimes. They aren’t really my thing, either.”

Jeno turned his head, watching Mark’s profile. His nose was unique, with a tiny bump at the bridge and a sharp turn downwards. Jeno tried to remember the shape of Renjun’s nose. Renjun had had a unique nose, too, and Jeno had always thought it was so pretty, elegant almost, like it belonged on a statue. If he saw it in silhouette, Jeno was sure he would have recognized it; but for some reason right then, he could not picture how it looked. It wasn’t the beer -- he was only buzzed, not properly drunk. It was the distance.

“Why’d you come, if they aren’t your thing?”

Mark fiddled with the loose flap of his beer label, where it had begun to peel away from the bottle. “I guess they’re kind of like a reset. Whenever things get fucked up in my life, it seems like one crazy night might be enough to fix it. Or maybe not fix it. Just -- make the fucked up things forgettable.”

A reset. Jeno wanted one, too. He wanted to make things forgettable. If he could just forget about Renjun -- if he could have just forgotten Renjun years ago -- he thought he could maybe move on. But he didn’t want to forget him. Not when Renjun had been the one to find him in the first place. Jeno thought that there was nothing better in the world than the feeling of being found.

“I know what you mean,” Jeno whispered. He took another sip from his beer. A breeze blew in, lifting his shoelaces where they dangled from the balcony, and Jeno felt kind of like he was flying.

“But then I actually show up,” Mark added, “and I remember that parties suck.”

Jeno laughed, head back, chest tickling. Mark was studying Jeno as though he was recording the moment in his brain, making it unforgettable. Jeno noticed it and his laugh fell away, taking deep breaths instead, hoping they would give him the courage not to look away from Mark’s eyes.

Then Mark leaned in and kissed him on the mouth. It was a tentative kiss, one that asked permission for more. Jeno kissed him back, tasting the beer on Mark’s lips. He wasn’t chasing the thrill of the kiss, but the quiet intimacy of it, the little connection they’d forged in just an hour, the comfort of an understanding touch.

Jeno had never kissed anyone but Renjun. His mind drifted, and he remembered Renjun’s kisses, how desperate and painful and remarkable they’d been, as if Renjun had been trying to bruise him, but the more Jeno had learned of Renjun’s heart, the more he’d begun to think it was the other way around. Renjun had wanted to be bruised. He’d wanted retribution for everything he’d done.

Jeno broke the kiss, turning away from it to press his forehead against the cool concrete of the baluster.

“Sorry,” Mark said. “I -- I think I misread things. Sorry.”

“You didn’t misread things,” Jeno murmured.

He couldn’t see Mark’s face, but he could hear him messing with his hair, trying to shake off the embarrassment of his rejection. “Did you just get out of a relationship or something?” Mark asked gently.

“It wasn’t really a relationship. It never panned out the right way.”

“Are you still in love with that person?”

Jeno didn’t know how to answer. _Yes_ seemed just as truthful as _no._ He would always love Renjun. That was the terrifying thing about first love -- it lingered. It shaped every love that came after it.

But it wasn’t forever. It was the first, not the last. Jeno could move on, if he only found the strength to do it.

“I think I need more time to make up my mind,” Jeno finally answered. It seemed like only the smallest of steps. But admitting that he could envision a future without Renjun seemed revolutionary. He felt again like he was flying.

“That’s fair,” Mark said stiffly, though he was smiling. “Here -- let me give you my number. No pressure or anything. Just in case --”

“Yeah.” Jeno blushed as he wriggled his phone from his pocket, opened his contacts, and handed it over. He didn’t know if he would ever dial that number. If he did, it might only be to hang out as friends, and that way okay, too. Frankly, Jeno wasn’t sure he needed to love anyone right then. But he would leave the door open to the possibility.

Mark handed his phone back, and they continued to sit and watch the sunset. The party inside rattled through the floor and shook the balcony like an earthquake, like it might crumble and send them falling to the ground any second.

\---

Summer break came faster than Jeno had anticipated. He’d been home once already during his first semester, but for only a weekend. This time, he would have almost a month, and so much to tell his father. That was part of the reason he left a day earlier than they had planned. He wanted to surprise him. He wanted to have as much time as he could.

He left the dorms at two in the afternoon, hoping he would arrive right around dinner time. He was already imagining the look of complete shock on his father’s face when he walked in the front door. “What are you doing here?” his father would ask incredulously, eyes huge and magnified behind his glasses. “I thought you were coming tomorrow?” Jeno chuckled to himself at the thought, rubbing his thumb and forefinger against his lips as his other hand rested on the steering wheel.

The highway rolled by underneath him. He still wasn’t quite used to the drive, and though the distance was a nuisance, he found it calming, too. Sitting in the driver’s seat was empowering. Whenever he drove, he felt more adult, like the simple knowledge that he could take off and drive all the way to the water meant he was boundless. He put his window down and breathed in the muddled smells of car exhaust and mowed grass from the roadside. The sky was beginning to darken as it neared six o’clock. Street lights flickered on on the horizon. Jeno’s heart tugged inside his chest like it knew he was close to home.

When he hit his hometown, he detoured to stop at the gas station and fill the tank. The neon sign on the post guided him into the lot and he didn’t realize it was fate until he slowed beside the pump, opening his door to run inside and grab some drinks to bring home. He stopped halfway, hand on the door handle, one foot on the parking lot pavement.

Renjun met his eye from just a couple feet away. He was wearing a shiny windbreaker with the gas station logo at its breast. His hands were swallowed by its sleeves, making him look small inside it like a child wearing his father’s clothes. His hair was so long his bangs had grown past his brows, almost obscuring his eyes. And those eyes were _tired_ , ringed by dark circles, having lost the sharp glint Jeno usually saw in him. It was so sad that Jeno wanted to look away. But he wanted to keep staring, too -- Renjun was still beautiful. Jeno had forgotten a bit of that beauty after being away from it for so long, but now it was pulling him back in again, a moth to a flame. He knew, he _knew_ that Renjun would burn him. He got out of his car and shut the door behind him anyway.

“Hey,” he said.

Renjun hesitated before answering, as though he were afraid. “Hey.”

“Um. How are you?”

“Fine.” Renjun looked down at the ground. The town lights behind his head shimmered, diffusing like fireworks in rain.

“You’re -- you’re still at home, then?”

“Yeah.”

Every time before, Renjun had clawed his way back into Jeno’s life, then slipped away as if it had been nothing at all. He had no claws this time. It was as if he’d been humbled. Somehow, Jeno hated to see it. It didn’t feel like Renjun without the intensity and the tenacity. He felt more like a ghost.

“I know you don’t want me to talk to you,” Jeno said plainly. “I just want to know. Are you doing okay?”

The concern in Jeno’s voice seemed to reach through to Renjun, as though no one had shown him any compassion in a long time. He pulled his phone out and checked the time.

“I get off in ten minutes,” he said.

Jeno handed over his cash for the pump, got back into his car, and waited behind the wheel.

\---

Renjun’s hand reached along the wall in the dark, searching for the lightswitch. When he flicked it on, Jeno took in the state of his apartment. It was messy, but he knew that Renjun worked and cleaned the apartment all by himself, so he didn’t judge him for it. There were not many dishes in the sink, but rows of empty beer bottles beside it and take out boxes piled in the garbage can. Bills covered the table, some still unopened. It looked as though the washing machine was broken, but could not afford to be fixed. Its bottom panel hung open, loose bolts and screws scattered in front of it on the floor, a small puddle of leaked water surrounding it.

“Sorry,” Renjun said.

“It’s alright. Where’s your dad?”

“The hospital,” Renjun answered. “He’s having surgery on his back this weekend. They’re keeping him tonight and operating in the morning.”

“Oh.” It struck Jeno suddenly the reason for his being invited over -- just as he had when he was a child, Renjun hated being left alone at night. He needed someone to make him feel safe. Jeno wondered if, had he not shown up in town, Renjun might have found someone else. He wondered how many other men Renjun had slept with since he’d gone away. Had he opened up to any of them? Had he loved any of them? Jeno doubted it. Renjun was a closed book.

Jeno followed him to his bedroom. Things were in disorder there, too, as though Renjun had not had time to clean it in months. His bed was sloppily unmade, one corner of the bedspread unfurled and sliding down to expose the bare mattress. Jeno had not seen Renjun’s room since they were little, and just like Renjun himself, it seemed to have completely changed over the years.

“Where are your bugs?” Jeno asked, pointing to the far wall. That was the biggest difference that stood out to him. Renjun had always taken so much pride in his collection, but now it was nowhere to be seen, leaving the pale, cracking paint exposed.

“I got rid of them,” Renjun answered.

“Why?”

“Because they were pointless.”

“They made you happy,” Jeno said softly.

Renjun didn’t respond. Outside his window, the sky was near black now, as if the world was shutting him out.

Jeno reached out and folded Renjun into his arms, leaning his cheek against his hair. He felt Renjun’s hands settle on his back. They stood like that in the dark for a while, and Jeno thought for a moment that he might have heard Renjun beginning to cry; but when the other boy tilted his face up, there were no tears. He only stood on his toes and pressed his lips to Jeno’s, reopening the old wound, daring Jeno to try and forget him.

Jeno wondered how much damage could be done in one night.

\---

Jeno woke with Renjun’s face close at his chest, feeling his faint breath against his collarbone. Jeno gently tucked a loose strand of hair behind Renjun’s ear, then rolled over as delicately as he could to read the time on the alarm clock. It was eight thirty AM. _So much for surprising Dad,_ Jeno thought. He decided the early departure had been worth it anyway, if only for the chance to sleep beside Renjun just this once, the way he’d wanted it all his life.

It had to end. That’s what he had told himself the night before as he’d kissed Renjun against the pillow and tugged him out of his jeans. He would not be weak in the morning. He sat up on the bed’s edge, and began to slip back into his discarded clothes.

He heard the mattress creak behind him as Renjun awoke, too. _Don’t look at him,_ Jeno told himself, but Renjun had slid over and leaned his forehead against Jeno’s naked shoulder. His arms wrapped around Jeno’s middle. He trapped him like a bug in a jar.

“You’re leaving,” Renjun said.

“I’ve gotta go home.”

“Is this the last time?”

“Yes.”

“Then can I at least show you something?”

Jeno felt Renjun’s eyelashes flutter against his back.

“Yeah,” he said.

Renjun slipped out of bed beside him and pulled his jeans on. Then he crossed the room to his desk and opened the front drawer. Jeno watched his body, silhouetted by the early morning light from the window, and his heart beat the way it used to, because Renjun would always be beautiful, even if he was not Jeno’s.

He came back with his sketchbook in his hands. “Here,” he said.

Jeno took it, carefully, stroking the leather spine with his thumb. It made a cracking noise as he bent the book open on his lap. There were drawings, a hundred drawings, scattered over the rough white pages. Some were of insects, and some were of the view from Renjun’s window, but most of them were of Jeno. The back of Jeno’s head in class, Jeno on the baseball field in his uniform, Jeno from when they were children, round-faced and grinning. He took in a breath and held it, fingers gently tracing the pictures as if they were something sacred. Renjun watched mildly, leaning against his bedside table, rubbing his arm.

“These are incredible,” Jeno whispered. “God, Renjun. Your art has always been so good, but -- these look like something a professional would do.” He tore his eyes away so he could look Renjun in the face. “Have you thought about going to school for it?”

“I’m not going to school,” Renjun said flatly.

“What, are you just going to stay here like this?” Jeno’s voice became hoarse with forcefulness. He didn’t want to shame Renjun, but he didn’t want him to be stuck forever, either. “Renjun. I know I can’t make you do anything. But please, just think about it. Do something for yourself, for once.”

“My dad --”

“He’s no good to you. You know that.”

Renjun closed his mouth, acknowledging the truth with silence. Jeno gave the sketchbook back to him, and he held it uselessly, limply in his hands.

“You should take it,” Renjun said.

“It’s your hard work. I’m not going to take it.”

“I don’t want it.”

Jeno sat staunchly with his hands on his knees.

Renjun opened his book, tore a page out of it, and shoved it under Jeno’s nose. “Then take this one,” he said. It was a drawing of three children rendered in heavy, smudged lines, almost dark enough to be shadows instead of people. Jeno looked closer and saw that one had a long braid, another a baseball mitt, the third a bug-catching net slung over his shoulder. They seemed to be walking towards an invisible horizon, or maybe it was a sunset so bright that it was left stark white.

Jeno smiled, folded the drawing, and slipped it into his pocket. He stood to gather the rest of his clothes, and checked to make sure his car keys were still in his jacket.

“Hey,” Renjun said, before Jeno could pull the jacket on. “Um.”

“What is it?”

“Could I --” Renjun’s face was pink. Jeno had not seen him be shy like that in a very long time. He was endeared by it, though it was too late to change his mind. “Could I take a photo of you?”

“ _Huh?_ ” Jeno couldn’t help but be startled at the request. It was about the last thing he’d ever expected Renjun to ask him. “A photo?”

Renjun stared down at his empty hands, twisting his fingers.

“Okay,” Jeno said.

Renjun took his phone from the bedside stand and raised it in front of his face. Jeno wasn’t really sure what to do, but he flattened his sleep-mussed hair and tried a little smile, waiting for the camera click. Renjun took the photo, just one, as quickly as possible, like he was embarrassed to do it. He kept looking down at the photo after, cradling it in his hands, face so soft that Jeno could only perceive it as the face of a child, gentle and innocent and shy to love. Jeno wished he was the one taking a photo right then; he wanted to preserve this Renjun forever.

“Is it okay?” Jeno asked.

“Yeah.”

“Good.”

Jeno shrugged his jacket on and walked out to the front door. Renjun followed to say his goodbyes, stopping at the mat as Jeno stepped into his sneakers.

“I’ll see you around,” Jeno said softly. He didn’t really believe it; he would go back to school, and Renjun would stay here, and it was entirely possible that they would never see each other again. But he didn’t want to leave things on a sad note.

“Okay,” Renjun said.

Jeno took Renjun’s hands and leaned down for one last kiss. It was chaste, barely there, like their first kiss should have been at thirteen, if either of them had been brave enough to do it or smart enough to see that what they’d wanted was right in front of them.

Their hands were the last place they parted. Renjun opened Jeno’s palm and drew something there; Jeno recognized the double wings of a butterfly. Then Renjun folded Jeno’s hand shut, as if saying, _keep it, it’s yours._

Jeno walked out the door, and found that it did not hurt.

\---

When Jeno walked through his front door and into the kitchen, his dad was mixing something in a bowl at the counter. He looked up, noticed Jeno there, and was so excited that he flung his spoon in the air and splattered brown batter across the front of the refrigerator.

“Jeno!” he yelled, running to wrap him in a bear hug. “I didn’t think you’d be back until lunch time. You nearly gave me a heart attack.”

“Sorry,” Jeno said, grinning. “Was whatever you’re baking meant to be a surprise?”

“Chocolate lava cake,” his dad explained, walking back to the counter. Jeno followed and settled at one of the tall chairs at the island, and it felt strangely as if he’d never left home in the first place. “I’d let you lick the spoon, but, well…” He picked it up off the floor. A tuft of Bongshik’s shedded hair stuck to it. “It’s a little dusty.”

“I think I’ll pass, thanks.”

“Well. Tell me about everything. Classes. Finals. Baseball.” He paused and raised a mischievous eyebrow. “Boys?” 

“No boys,” Jeno said flatly.

“Darn. Maybe someday.” His father went to the fridge to get the carton of milk. As he opened it, Jeno saw the photo of the three of them -- him, dad, mom -- that had been in the frame Renjun had broken. The photo itself had stayed in one piece, and found a new home on the fridge door. When his father had asked him about it, all Jeno had said was that he’d knocked it over on accident.

He stared at the photograph so long that when he shut his eyes, he could see it behind his eyelids.

“Hey,” his father said. “You can’t fall asleep there. It’s ten AM.”

“I’m not,” Jeno insisted. In truth, he could have. There was nothing he wanted more than to be home, be near his father, and have a nice dream.

“Why don’t you go unpack?” his father suggested. “I’ll pop the cake in the oven, and then we can pack a lunch for later.”

“Going to see Mom?”

“If you want to.”

“Sure.” Jeno smiled, picked his bag up where he’d set it on the kitchen floor, and brought it into his bedroom. It looked the same as it had before he’d left, carpet freshly vacuumed and desk dusted. He breathed in, and breathed out.

Jeno unfolded the drawing Renjun had given him and fastened it to his tackboard.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> well -- the end is near!! i think the next chapter should not be that long of a wait, though this one kind of feels like the end (it's the end of jeno's story, at least). can't wait to read all your comments, and also i love all of you!!
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/playing_prince) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/playing_prince)


	10. Renjun

_When Renjun and Jeno were eleven years old, they wrote letters to their mothers and attached them to balloon strings. They’d bought the balloons at the market on the corner and walked to the open field near the park. It was a cool spring day; the clouds were like cotton balls and the breeze was light. It gently pushed them along, lifting the ends of Renjun’s fleece jacket, making their balloon strings dance._

_They tied the letters carefully to make sure they would not fall off once they released them. Renjun asked Jeno to double check his knot. He tugged on the ends, gave Renjun a thumbs up, and then they counted down together to the moment that they both let go._

_One, two, three._

_The balloons flew fast, straight up towards the sun. Before long they were dots, barely visible. As Renjun and Jeno walked home together, they kept trying to find them again. “There they are! There they are!” Jeno called, pointing to the faintest red blips by a cloud. “They’re still going!”_

_Renjun could not see them over the trees. Jeno knelt down and Renjun climbed onto his back, arms wrapped around Jeno’s neck, and he watched their balloons from piggyback. They disappeared again. Jeno gave chase, running as fast as he could down the sidewalk, and Renjun laughed against the collar of Jeno’s coat. When he heard that laugh, Jeno readjusted his grip under Renjun’s thighs to make sure he was holding him tight, and then ran faster, faster, down the hill. Renjun threw his head back, laughing so hard he could barely breathe, feeling the wind in his hair. Jeno spun in a circle. The world blurred around Renjun, a mix of color and light as if he was being swirled inside a kaleidoscope._

_Renjun was weightless. He was flying._

_“One more time,” he said. “One more time.”_

_“Hold on. I’m getting dizzy.”_

_“One more time,” Renjun said again._

_Jeno did what Renjun asked of him, always. The balloons hit heaven and disappeared._

_This is was what was written inside Renjun’s letter:_

Dear Mom,

It’s been a long time since I saw you. I can’t even remember you. I only know what you look like from photographs. But Dad always tells me how kind and loving you were, and about how I was the center of your universe. So even though I didn’t really know you, I miss you every single day.

Dad misses you, too. He doesn’t like to talk about it much, but I can tell that he does. I think that’s why he drinks so much. Me and him don’t get along real well when he drinks. He snaps at me and makes fun of the things I like and sometimes I think he does it because he’s hurting over you, but sometimes I think he does it for no good reason. I never know whether to forgive him or not. I wish you were still around. If you were, I think we would be a happy family. Maybe Dad ought to try writing you a letter, too. It might make him feel better.

There’s a boy I met this year named Jeno. He lives down the street from me and it was his idea for us to write letters. His mom is dead, too. He’s the only other boy I know who doesn’t have a mom. If you met him, I bet you would like him. I think he might be the only person in the whole world who understands me. He doesn’t make fun of me when I cry, and he helps me catch bugs and tells me he likes the pictures I draw. He’s probably the best friend I’ll ever have. So even if me and Dad don’t get along, you don’t need to worry about me. I think as long as Jeno is my friend, I’ll be okay.

I love you, and I miss you.

Love,

Renjun

\---

Renjun’s dad returned after his surgery seeming completely unchanged. The doctor said the adjustment they’d made might help to improve his mobility, but it was useless unless followed through with physical therapy. He had appointments every Tuesday and Thursday following the operation, but it became clear over the next few weeks that getting him to attend even once a week was a struggle.

“It isn’t doing any good,” his father claimed. “There’s no improvement. They’re just wasting our time.”

“You’ve only been to a few sessions,” Renjun countered. “I think you just have to be consistent, and --”

His father turned up the volume on the TV.

Renjun bit the inside of his lip. It was the only way to keep from shouting something nasty.

He was beginning to think that the reason his father refused to attend therapy was because he liked having an excuse for Renjun to take care of him. When Renjun was not at work, he was usually cleaning his father’s room, which generated empties at an incredible pace. And though his father did not seem to have the energy to go to his therapy sessions, he did have the energy to be picked up by one of his friends and driven to the bar. Then Renjun would have to wake up in the night when he was supposed to be getting his rest before work the next morning and help his drunk father back to his bedroom, and the cycle would begin all over again.

On one occasion, his father came back at around nine PM, early for him, and once he’d sat down, he’d asked Renjun to get him a beer from the fridge.

“We’re all out,” Renjun responded, straightening his father’s pillows.

“What do you mean, we’re all out?”

“There isn’t any beer in the fridge.”

“Didn’t you buy some when you went to the store on Monday?”

Renjun glared at him. Beer was usually at the top of his shopping list, but this time, he’d passed by the cooler section in favor of getting a nicer cut of beef for dinner one night. He’d known it would come back to bite him eventually. But when he’d done it, he’d liked the little bit of pleasure it had brought him. His father thought he could boss him around, but he forgot sometimes that Renjun was the one in control.

“No. I guess I forgot,” Renjun lied.

“You can’t even remember something that fucking simple?” His father’s elbow flew and hit the lamp on his stand. It thumped back against the wall, then tipped over and tumbled to the floor, lampshade denting in on its side.

Renjun took a step back from the bed. His blood began to boil. “I do everything around here,” he snapped. “You’d think you’d be thankful instead of treating me like shit for every little mistake.”

“I’m your family.” His father lowered his voice, speaking earnestly as if trying to make an emotional appeal. “I raised you alone after your mother died. Taking care of me shouldn’t be some kind of chore to you. It’s not like I asked for any of this to happen, Renjun. It’s not my fucking fault. You know I’d be helping you if I could, but I _can’t._ ”

“If you wanted to help me,” Renjun said sharply, “you would go to physical therapy and stop treating me like your maid.”

“Oh, that’s right.” His father leaned back, narrowing his eyes. They were red, the same color as his beer-flushed cheeks. “This is all my fault, isn’t it? I’m sorry I’m such an inconvenience to you. Well, I wish I could go back to work. I wish I could do what you’re doing. But look at me.” He slammed a fist down on his leg. There was no reflex, no hint of pain.

Renjun wondered how it was that his father always managed to make him feel bad for him. He was guilt-stricken, for the hundredth time, but with repetition came awareness. He lifted his head and pushed the guilt back down.

“You can’t do this to me,” Renjun said firmly. “You can’t hold it over my head. You have no right. You have no right to treat me like this.”

His father’s hand shot to Renjun’s arm, wrapping tight around his wrist and yanking him closer to the bed. Renjun tripped over the fallen lamp, stomach slamming into the bedside, face hitting the blanket.

There was a moment of silence, as his father recognized what he’d done. It was the first time he’d ever laid a hand on him. He let go of Renjun’s arm, mouth open like he was about to apologize.

The wind had been knocked out of Renjun, but it didn’t slow him down. He scrambled back to his feet and stormed out, slamming the door behind him. There was a crash behind it, probably his father breaking the TV remote against the nightstand. Renjun went to his bedroom and laid down on his bed, clutching his stomach in one hand, every breath burning. Tears trickled over.

He was so, so tired. Tired of the work with no acknowledgment and the shouting matches and the smell of spilt beer on his father’s carpet. He had nothing left that made it worth it. He did not have his insects, or the mild sense of achievement he’d used to get from his good grades, or any friends to talk to. Not one of them had texted him since school ended. It wasn’t as if he’d spoken to any of them the rest of the semester, anyway. But for some reason he’d figured at least one would ask how he was or how his father was doing. Radio silence. He was disconnected from everyone. Especially Jeno. It completely gutted him to remember.

His gaze slid over the edge of his bed, to where his sketchbook sat on the floor. He’d tossed it there after the morning Jeno had left him, and not bothered to pick it up since. Now, he retrieved it, lying back down and holding it open over his face, flipping idly through the pages. Jeno, Jeno, Jeno. All those meticulous drawings, and not once had it occurred to him that he was in love. Not until it was too late. Renjun ran his fingers over one of the drawings, one of Jeno smiling with crinkled eyes.

He remembered the last night they’d been together, when Jeno had driven him home from the gas station. They’d kissed in his room, then in his bed, then Renjun had tossed his clothes to the floor because kisses had not been enough. He’d wanted Jeno in every conceivable way, because he’d known it would be the last time he could ever have him. Afterwards, they’d lain in the dark, Jeno’s arms wrapped around him and his lips still soft against Renjun’s temple. Renjun had tried to stay awake so he could remember as much of that last night as he could. He’d eventually fallen asleep anyway, lulled by the sound of Jeno’s breathing beside him. In his dreams, they were children again, sleeping in the sun on their flat rock in the woods.

Renjun’s hands shook. He lowered the sketchbook over his face and cried against it.

 _What, are you just going to stay here like this?_ Jeno’s voice rang in his ears. _He’s no good to you. You know that._

Of course Renjun knew it. He’d known it his whole life. But he’d still thought his father was the only person who loved him, no matter how crazy that sounded. His father only had him, and he only had his father. They’d had to love each other because no one else would.

But Jeno had loved Renjun. Not out of obligation, not out of pity. Jeno had loved him because he’d seen lovely things in Renjun which Renjun could not see in himself, because his father had called them shameful and stifled them.

Renjun opened his eyes. Quickly, he wiped the tears away and stumbled to his desk, clearing his throat as he picked up his phone.

\---

The community art center charged a small fee to cover supply costs. Renjun took that money from the grocery budget for that week. He could not sacrifice his father’s beers again unless he wanted another confrontation, so instead he cut the rice. They still had some at home; Renjun would simply have to eat less of it, if he wanted his spending to go unnoticed. He began skipping breakfast everyday. His father did not know, or simply did not care.

Art classes were on Wednesday and Thursday nights, just after the end of Renjun’s shift. He told his father he was working late, and took the bus right from the gas station to the community center. 

The first class began with the instructor introducing herself. She had big hair and round glasses and was already donning her paint-splattered apron when Renjun arrived. For their first day, she said that everyone was free to pick any medium they wanted and experiment. Renjun shuffled to the front of the room to the table covered in supplies. He’d only ever worked in pencils, aside from the few art classes he’d taken in school, where they’d used paper mache and acrylics. He gravitated towards the watercolors, picking up one of the paletes and examining it. The colors were used and cracked, with stains along the white edge. He collected a canvas, some brushes, and water, and returned to his station near the back.

He stared at the empty canvas for a long time, not knowing what to draw. He hadn’t drawn anything for a long time. His pencil touched the canvas before he’d fully decided what he was doing, dragging a sketchy line across it. His wrist seemed to move automatically, flicking in a curve. A cheek, a chin, the bend of a neck. A tiny dot, beneath the right eye.

When he was satisfied with his sketch, he began to paint. He used the water conservatively at first, afraid at diluting the pigment too much or making it too runny to control. As he became more comfortable, he decided to push it further, mixing colors together, layering them, varying the amount of water he used. He found that he liked the way the watercolors worked, almost translucent, like a pane of stained glass, or a butterfly’s wing as light shone through it.

“Oh, wow,” the teacher said, walking up behind him. “That’s lovely. Have you used watercolors before?”

“Not very much.”

“You seem to have a natural talent for it. And that sketch -- you aren’t a beginner, are you?”

Renjun blushed at the compliment. “Um. I like to draw. Just as a hobby.”

“Well, color me impressed. Maybe you should have signed up for one of our intermediate classes.”

The teacher dragged a chair over so she could sit beside him and give him some pointers. By the time the class was over, Renjun’s painting was not finished, and he was not perfectly happy with how it looked, but he felt like he was moving in the right direction. All he needed was practice, and time, and the calm that came with picking up a brush and forgetting that he had to go home after.

\---

After five weeks of classes, Renjun had acquired a small collection of his works, which he kept hidden under his bed once he finished them. They’d learned acrylics and charcoal and the teacher had even given Renjun an early start on learning oils, before anyone else in the class. She could see that he took it very seriously. And she gave him critiques to match it, making sure she didn’t sugarcoat things and helpfully guiding him, with a gentle but firm hand, to improve his technique. He felt he’d learned more in that just-over-a-month than he had his entire life.

One day, he took a risk and brought one of his works into his father’s room. It was the last one he’d completed, a still life rendered in pencil and charcoal. It was modeled after an eclectic blend of objects the instructor had set up in the front -- an open fishing tackle box, a pineapple, a statue of an elephant, some dangly earrings hanging off the arm of a table mirror. He’d been quite pleased with the way it came out. So he held in front of his father’s face, not sure what to expect, and admitted, “I started taking some art classes. I thought you might want to see what I’ve been working on.”

“Art classes?” His father took the drawing in his hands, tilting it towards the light. “You didn’t tell me anything about art classes.”

“They’re not a big deal or anything. Just at the community center.” Renjun scratched the back of his calf with his toe. He could feel a bit of heat seeping up his neck as he waited anxiously for his father’s appraisal.

“What’s it supposed to be?”

“It’s a still life. It’s just some random stuff.”

“I don’t get it.”

“It’s just for practice.”

His father subtly shook his head. “Is this what you’re doing in your free time? You ought to be looking for a better job. This kind of thing isn’t going to get you anywhere.”

Renjun deflated. He knew it would be like this. Why had he bothered to show him in the first place? What reaction had he been hoping for? Praise? Renjun could not remember the last time his father had praised him. Renjun could not remember the last time his father had said a single nice thing about him, unless he wanted a favor from him.

Renjun took the drawing back, pressing his thumbs into the paper. A bit of the charcoal smeared, but he was too hurt to care.

“I just wanted to show you,” he said quietly.

His father, in a rare display of sensitivity, responded, “It’s a nice picture, Renjun. I just don’t get what you’re trying to achieve. People don’t make it in art. If you want a career, you ought to find something… _concrete._ Like what I used to do.”

 _And we both know how that turned out for you,_ Renjun wanted to bite back, but he resisted.

His father picked up his newspaper from the stand and began to read, as if Renjun was not still standing there.

He didn’t care. Not about what Renjun wanted, or whether he was happy, or how much Renjun had given up. He would sit there all day, all year, for the rest of his life, tossing beer bottles on the floor and waiting for Renjun to pick them up, as if it was the only thing he was good for.

Finally, Renjun made up his mind.

\---

The art class instructor allowed Renjun to come in outside of classroom hours. She’d given him an extra copy of the key and told him he was welcome to any supplies he wanted. She didn’t usually give students that kind of special treatment, she’d said, but since he needed the extra time to work on his portfolio she made an exception. Renjun had been so thankful he’d nearly started to bawl.

The deadline for applications for the next school year was less than two weeks away. Renjun wished he had decided to apply earlier, because now it was a mad rush. Comparing his pieces, scrapping the ones that weren’t good enough, realizing he needed more figure drawings, running to the classroom at six in the morning to squeeze in a session before work. And like his dad had suggested, Renjun got another job, on top of his one at the gas station. He washed dishes at a restaurant downtown for minimum wage. At least twelve hours a day was spent away from home, and when he returned, usually late at night, he smelled like an unpleasant mixture of gasoline, turpentine, and dish detergent. Half the time, he was too tired to shower the stench off; he would drop like a stone into bed, and get his four hours of sleep before he had to be up again in the morning.

The school he’d settled on was in Busan, just under an hour away. Close enough to hurry home if there was an emergency, far enough away to justify his moving out. It was an art school, and Renjun had spent a long time scrolling through its website, looking at the photos inside the studios that showed off their facilities and supplies. It showed students working, too, chatting or listening to music on headphones as they painted and drew. Somehow, those photos had made everything seem possible. It had made him even more resolute.

The final piece he was doing for his portfolio was a self-portrait. It had been suggested to him by his teacher because she’d said it was the easiest kind of life drawing to do -- he didn’t need another model or reference, and he could work on it when he was in the classroom alone. All he needed was a mirror, which he posed in front of him on the table while he mixed his paints, trying to find the right colors for the light and shadow where they played across his face. He’d never done a self-portrait before. The only times he’d ever used to draw himself were if Jeno and Yerim were in the drawing, too. He was unaccustomed to the lines of his own face. It was as if he’d never really looked in a mirror before -- as if it was the first time he’d ever really seen himself.

He started by trying natural colors, because he’d thought the realism might look good in his portfolio, but then he’d decided that there was no point if he did not take a risk. He wanted his work to stand out. He wanted the college staff to stop and stare when they looked at his paintings for the first time. He wanted to be unforgettable.

So he branched out into bright colors, lavender and hot pink and electric blue and sunshine yellow. He smeared them into each other, splattered them across the canvas. It was like the kaleidoscope world he’d seen from Jeno’s back: messy, surreal, beautiful. And he loved the process, the way the stress of everything dissipated when he whipped his brush over the canvas, the way a drop of sweat was beading down his forehead but he didn’t even notice it, he was so focused. Alone, under the dull buzzing of the community center lights, he found a sense of peace.

He planned on going home at ten PM, but he stayed long past. After a while, his eyes stung tiredly, and he could barely lift his arm to move his brush, but he kept going. He painted so long that he could see it start to get light again outside the classroom window. At some point he laid his head down on the table, just for a second, to take a rest. That second expanded, and he was out like a light, dead asleep beside his palette and easel.

The custodian came in at seven AM. “Kid,” he said, shaking Renjun’s arm. “You good?”

Renjun wearily sat up. He had work in an hour. When he looked at his canvas again, having forgotten what state it was in, he was taken aback. Not because he was disappointed in it, but because it was lovely. It was strange for him to look at his own face and find it lovely. His heart beat as if it was brand new.

Quickly, he took his piece down and tucked it into his cabinet at the back of the room. Then he went to the bathroom, washed the smeared paint from his cheeks, and went to catch the morning bus.

\---

When Renjun received his acceptance letter, he didn’t believe it was real.

He’d gotten his portfolio in exactly two minutes before the midnight deadline. While he’d still wished he’d had more time to edit and rearrange things, he was happy with the result. Even if he didn’t get in (though he’d really, really wanted to), he was satisfied just with having created something. It had made him like himself just a little bit more.

But the letter had made him happy enough to break. He’d opened it at his bedroom desk, trembling in anticipation.

_We are pleased to offer you a spot at Busan Arts College beginning in the spring --_

The tears fell and hit the paper. He’d soundlessly mopped them with his sleeve, then leaned back in his chair, letting the sunlight from the window touch his face as he closed his eyes.

It took him a month to work up the courage to tell his father.

He used that time to come up with a plan. It wasn’t so easy as just running away. If there was one thing his father had told him all his life, it was that he was a coward, and Renjun refused to prove that accusation right. He took the easiest steps first, trying to ease his way up to the big stuff. Packing his bags (and hiding them in the closet), making phone calls, getting cash out from the bank to cover his bus fare and placing it in the interior pocket of his backpack.

Finally, just a few weeks prior to the beginning of the semester, Renjun pulled up a chair at his father’s bedside.

“Dad,” he said. “I have to tell you something.”

His father turned his head against his pillow. He hadn’t been drinking yet that day, which should have been a good thing, but sometimes he was more miserable when sober. No alcohol to soften his edges. “What is it?”

Renjun handed him his acceptance letter. “I’m going to school in Busan.”

His father’s fingers pressed firm lines into the paper. “Art school? I thought we talked about this.”

“Yes. And I decided on my own. I want to go to school.”

His father let out an airy, disbelieving laugh. “What am I supposed to do with this, Renjun? Pat you on the back? How are you going to support yourself like this? It’s totally absurd.”

“The school is giving me a scholarship. It’ll cover my classes and my housing.” He paused, and added, in case it wasn’t clear, “I’m moving out. To be closer to campus.”

The letter hit the blanket. “Moving out, my ass. What the hell are you talking about? You can’t just leave me like this.”

Renjun produced another piece of paper, torn from a notepad with his handwriting scrawled across it. “I made some calls. There are people whose job is to do this kind of thing. Live-in nurses and stuff. I talked to one woman who sounded interested. Here’s her number. You should give her a call.”

His father’s face was still, but not peaceful. It was rigid with anger, turning his wrinkles into severe slashes. “I can’t pay for something like that. I can’t work --”

“Your unemployment should cover rent. And I’ll be working while I’m at school, so I can send money home to pay for everything else. I even saved some up to help you out the first few months. It’s not like I’m abandoning you.”

“That’s exactly what you’re fucking doing,” his father said deeply, gravely. “You’re leaving me all alone. You don’t give a shit about me.”

“That’s not true. You’re my family,” Renjun responded. He didn’t expand any further. He didn’t need to defend himself to a man who took him for granted.

His father hefted himself closer to the edge of the bed, one leg thrown over, hands gripping the bed sheet like he wanted to tear it apart. Renjun had forgotten how big his father was, having become so used to seeing him lying limply in his bed. He was still tall and broad and his voice boomed as he said, “You’re no fucking family of mine. I didn’t raise a son who was so scared of taking responsibility like a real man. I ought to cut you off. I ought to fucking disown your sorry ass.”

Renjun didn’t flinch. “Is that supposed to be a threat?” he asked coolly.

His father hesitated, mouth half-open. “You --” he began, bewildered. “You --”

Renjun snapped his letter back off the bed, then walked to the door and shut it behind him.

\---

Most of the kids in Renjun’s classes were a year younger than him, having applied right after their high school graduation. Renjun sometimes felt the sting of being a year behind where he should be, but he tried not to let it get to him. He wanted to be thankful for where he was. He’d worked hard to get there.

There was one other nineteen-year old in his class, a Media Arts majoring sophomore who’d begun taking the Fine Arts classes as electives. His name was Donghyuck, and he was kind of a loudmouth, which Renjun might have found annoying except he was having a bit of trouble making friends, which meant the class loudmouth was the easiest person to talk to. They sat at the same table together during Painting I, and oftentimes Renjun could simply come up with a topic (“What do you think about the food at the dining hall?”) and receive a lengthy essay in response (“It’s terrible, except on Fridays, because on Fridays they have Chinese food, and it totally kicks the ass of their regular menu, which frankly I’m not convinced isn’t made from cardboard and old leather boots…”).

Renjun hadn’t had a real friend in a long time, so he wasn’t quite sure how to go about it. Not that Donghyuck was his _friend_ yet, per se. They only talked in class, and they barely knew anything about each other. But Renjun found comfort in the knowledge that he had an opportunity. He had a new start, an empty canvas.

On Renjun’s fourth week, Donghyuck asked him to join him and some of the other kids in their class for dinner. Renjun was so surprised he’d dropped his brushes he’d been carrying to the sink, and they’d clattered across the concrete floor. Donghyuck had knelt to help him pick up.

“Dinner?” Renjun echoed. “Where?”

“Just on campus. We thought it would be fun to have a little get together.”

Renjun’s hand hovered over one of the brushes. “I’m… kind of surprised you’re inviting me,” he admitted.

“Why?”

“I don’t know anyone that well.”

“So?” Donghyuck slid the paintbrush from under Renjun’s fingers and handed it to him. “That’s how you get to know people better, isn’t it? By hanging out with them.”

Renjun gathered his brushes and turned around to the sink, letting a little smile rise when Donghyuck could not see it.

They ate at the dining hall which Donghyuck had claimed to hate, though he seemed to have no trouble shoveling down his food. There were about eight of them there, and Renjun sat at the far end of the table, quietly listening to everyone else as they told stories and inside jokes. The atmosphere was comfortable, jovial. It was nothing like eating with his friends in high school had been -- rude talk about girls, insults disguised as jokes, the general sense that any word tossed your way was simply the set-up for you to be undercut and humiliated. Even though he wasn’t saying much, Renjun liked it. He felt safe.

“Renjun,” one of the girls said, leaning over the table to meet his eyes. “I forget. What town did you say you were from again?”

He felt suddenly special at being singled out. He sat up straighter and said, “Oh. From a small town west of here. You probably haven’t heard of it.”

“Hmm. I always wanted to grow up in a small town. Seems like you’d grow up friends with everyone, right?”

Renjun laughed into his iced tea.

When he arrived back at his apartment later that night, he got in bed and pulled the covers up to his shoulders. He didn’t have a roommate, which might have made him feel lonely, but he liked the independence, too. No one to clean up after or butt heads with. And he found, for the first time in his life, that he was not afraid of being alone at night.

The moon was a crescent outside his window. Sleepily, he watched it, basking in its mild light and remembering how happy he’d felt earlier when he’d sat at the dining hall table. It had felt like he was living in the present, rather than the past.

A fluttery sigh slipped between his lips. He drifted off like that, under the moon, content for a moment in where and who he was.

\---

The semester was winding down. They’d had their midterm critiques. The professor had looked at Renjun’s piece -- a painting of a butterfly perched on an extended finger -- and told him that while his composition could use some work, his technique was rapidly improving. And after class had ended, she’d pulled him aside and suggested he enter it into the school’s freshman exhibition at the campus gallery.

“It’s a lovely painting,” she’d told him. “You should be proud of it.”

Presently, Renjun sat on the steps of the fine arts building, waiting for the shuttle to arrive that would bring him back to his apartment. The sky was blue at the horizon, but blackening at the top like an oil spill.

“Hey,” Donghyuck said from behind him. He came down the steps, bag slung over his shoulder. “Do you want a ride home? I took my car today.”

“That’s okay,” Renjun said. He liked the quiet of the bus ride home. It helped him to think clearly.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. Thanks, though.”

Donghyuck pursed his lips. Renjun wondered if he noticed the disconnect, the distance between Renjun and everyone else. It would be a lie to say it wasn’t intentional. He was still scared of friendships. He was too good at ruining them.

“By the way,” Donghyuck said. “I’ve been meaning to ask. What’s with the locket?”

Renjun impulsively touched a finger to where the pendant lay over his heart. He didn’t try to hide it. He’d worn it to class every day that semester, and only tucked it down his shirt during studio hours to protect it from paint splatter. “What do you mean? It’s just a locket.”

“I dunno. Don’t usually see guys wearing lockets.” Donghyuck shrugged. He wasn’t judgemental, only curious. “Is there something inside it?”

“A photo.”

“A photo? Of who, your girlfriend?”

“None of your business.”

Donghyuck snorted. “Always so blunt.” He took the last few steps and called up from the sidewalk, “Last chance for carpool.”

“No thanks.”

“Fine. I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”

Renjun watched Donghyuck walk away until he was lost in the sea of cars at the parking lot. His fingers closed around the locket, holding it tight in his fist as though he was clinging to it.

He was happy, but it hurt. Every so often, he would feel that way. He would feel he was making progress, but then he would wish Jeno was there to see it, and begin to break down. They’d always grown up together. It felt wrong that now they had to grow up apart.

Renjun realized it was nearly a year since they’d last spoken. Jeno, at his doorstep, kissing him and letting him go. It still haunted him. He still felt the ghost of Jeno’s lips. But Jeno had gone back to school, and Renjun had gone back to work, and if they’d ever passed each other by on the streets, they had not noticed it.

Renjun wondered if Jeno ever thought of him. He couldn’t decide if he wanted him to or not. Some part of him still longed for that link -- one solid connection, one thread to hold onto. He wanted the simplest assurance that he had once meant something to someone.

He took out his phone. He’d thought about calling Jeno nearly every day, but had always held himself back. It would be selfish, wouldn’t it? He would only be dragging Jeno down.

But he had changed, and Jeno had changed, too. He was braver now. Brave enough to begin typing a message to Jeno’s number, still saved in his phone ever since the night in the hospital.

_Hey. I know you probably don’t want to hear from me or anything and that’s okay. I’m sorry if I’m bothering you. You don’t even have to respond, if you don’t want to. But I wanted to tell you that I’m going to art school, like you said I should. I just thought you would want to know that._

He hit send. Embarrassed, he flipped his phone over in his lap so he couldn’t see the screen, and folded his arms over it.

The oil black was seeping into the clouds. Below it, the Busan lights flickered on, like tiny beads of ice over roofs. Renjun realized, as if for the first time, where he was. So far from home, so small among the tall buildings and wide roads. It was like being adrift on a chunk of ice in a dark ocean, searching for a boat’s blinking lantern. He was overwhelmed, knowing how many people surrounded him but did not know he even existed. Those were the worst moments; when he remembered he was not special.

To make himself feel better, he began to count the things he and everyone else might have in common. There were probably a hundred people in Busan who did not like their fathers. A thousand who had loved someone, but been forced to let them go. A million who had made mistakes. When he put it into numbers, he began to feel less alone.

Drowsily, he rested his head on his arms and shut his eyes. He could have fallen asleep right there on the steps, counting mistakes instead of sheep. A cool breeze ruffled his hair, and he had the idle thought that maybe, in Seoul, a cool breeze was touching Jeno, too. Maybe he had the same oil sky and half-moon. The same stars, the same memories. Renjun twisted his fingers into the chain of his locket like a child clutching a blanket, still unready to let it go. _One day,_ he told himself, swallowing a yawn, slipping towards sleep. _One day… one day, I’ll finally..._

Renjun’s phone buzzed in his lap.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> welp
> 
> ao3 tells me i've been writing this fic since march, which is just about the wildest shit ever. this fic started essentially as a little experiment on the side, something to play with while i worked on bigger projects -- but i'm so happy you all showed an interest in it, and it really grew into something of its own. writing it was rarely easy, but i think i'm happy with where it ended up.
> 
> What's Next For Rose?  
> 1\. returning to more regular updates for mcp!  
> 2\. a very secret one-shot which will be posted near the end of the month  
> 3\. after that, something new! maybe the markren idea i've been cooking up lately
> 
> hope to see you all there 💕
> 
> [twitter](https://twitter.com/playing_prince) | [cc](https://curiouscat.me/playing_prince)


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